Why Her? Why Not Me?

This life story traces a major segment of Roland’s adult life, an adult life riddled with devastating personal events. During the past thirty years, Roland has had ample opportunities to indulge in self-pity and to become extremely deft at it. In large part, this stems from the parade of very unique and scarring events that have beset his two sets of children and himself: (1) his having to singly raise his five children after his wife of seventeen years abandons him and their children for another man; (2) his having married a young lady, twenty-seven years his junior (Roland 52, his wife 25); (3) his having fathered two more sons, the youngest born when Roland was sixty years old, the other who was at death’s door at age four due to kidney cancer; (4) both he and his wife having been diagnosed with cancer within a five-week period, her with breast cancer, Roland with prostate cancer; (5) his wife dying at age forty-six and the associated emotional devastation experienced by their two young sons and himself; (6) and, for the second time in his life, the necessity of this now seventy-four-year-old parent having to singly raise his children. The support of Roland’s family and friends and, especially, his Catholic faith gave him the courage and spirit to push through these incredible hardships.