by Henri Zimand

Created on: January 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 01, 2010

Over five years ago i lost my wife Anda to Cancer. She was only forty nine much too young to pass away. We had four sons together. It was a fairy tale story, we met and twenty four hours later we were already engaged.

We were together twenty years and thirty eight days, in fact six years before Anda passed away, one morning she felt a growth in her breasts, she did not say anything but decided to call her doctor who saw her the following morning but did not really tell her anything, only when Anda made further tests and an operation we found out that Cancer decided to say hello.

Like in any family the first shock is terrible and you start thinking in panic the first hours and may be days. Then in our case Anda looked very cool and analyzed the facts and we looked in the Internet to find as much information as we could. Then Anda decided on the kind of doctor she wanted and started her treatment.

During that time, Anda was always positive and I never saw her complaining or saying one word about pain or ill feelings. Even when the doctor was rude or had no time, Anda never lost her patience, at a certain time she said good bye to her doctor and changed doctors and hospital for her treatment. Our children at the time were 6 years old to 12 years old and Anda always found time for them, in fact our kids never really felt that Anda was ill.

The first time that our kids really felt that it was going down was two months before Anda passed away when Anda had weaknesses and needed more treatments. Friends were coming during the six years to Anda to find strength and inspiration. Anda used to tell me that she was amazed, that she was the person ill and all her friends were looking to find strength within her for themselves.

The last month of Anda's life was clear that her illness was growing, and still it is a situation that I did not accept until the last hour before she passed away when I had no choice but to accept it. I even brought the kids to say good bye and say all they wanted to say to Anda even though on that morning she lost consciousness.

When it was clear and Anda passed away, something within me strengthened me and told me, you have 4 sons and they need to feel love more than anything else. That was the time that I decided to build a virtual Taj Mahal building a website called www.andaspirit.com . This site has inspired millions of people and it allowed me to go through the ordeal of losing a loved one and creating inspiration for millions worldwide with this site.

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