Miller, 48, smoked as a teen-ager, and then again briefly about five years ago. The cancer has spread to the lining of her lungs and into her lymph nodes. Doctors are trying chemotherapy to slow things down, but that’s all it will do. Plainly put, she is dying. But that’s not the way Jackie Miller intends to live the rest of her life.
“This is just another leg of the journey,” she said, “and I don’t want it to be about fear.” Instead, she said, she wants it to be about growth, and a testament to the love and friendship she said has brightly bloomed in this otherwise dark time.
June 14 in Greeley, Miller will marry her boyfriend, Jim Newkirk, whom she has been with for about two years and who she has lived with in Johnstown for about a year. Friends at North Colorado Medical Center, where she worked as a nurse, are organizing the event, which will include a bridal shower this weekend.
Later this month, her friend of about 20 years, P.J. Divorne, who calls Miller her “sister of everything but blood,” will take her on a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, where the two visited before together several years ago. In addition, Divorne has been helping around Miller and Newkirk’s house; cleaning, cooking meals, and taking Jackie to doctor’s appointments and chemo treatments when Newkirk’s schedule won’t allow it.
“Jackie is like family,” Divorne said. “I don’t have a big one. She’s helped me through some dark times in my life. She read the eulogy at my mother’s funeral and was there for me when my dad died. Always with unconditional love.
“I’m not doing this to pay anything back,” she said. “Jackie was there for me as a friend, and now I’ll be there for her.”
“As scary as this has all been,” Miller said, “it’s done nothing but bring out the best in people. The love and support has been incredible.”
Guided by love
Jim Newkirk, 46, has lived in Johnstown since 2002. Three years ago, his first wife, Dianna Ward, died at their home after dealing with breast cancer for about two years.
Dianna died May 2, 2005. This year on that same date, Jackie was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“I knew it was the anniversary of my wife’s death, but I was mostly thinking of Jackie,” he said on a recent Friday night, sitting on the couch holding her hand in their Johnstown Center home.
“I think it was more of an ironic distraction than anything, which was honestly nice to have,” Newkirk said. “When you get hit with something this, something like that actually takes your mind a bit off the reality of the situation.”
Newkirk asked Miller to marry him that night. The two had been talking about marriage, they said. This just made it that more important that they do it.
“I guess I feel like this was meant to be,” Newkirk said. “What I’ve gone through before with my first wife, I know I can go through this now with Jackie.
“The first thing something like this does is challenge your faith,” he said, “and from the very first moments after the news, I’ve never felt like I’ve had a stronger sense of faith in my life. This is the right thing to do. I’m ready for it.
“If I think I’m going to miss anything, it’s that I won’t have the time to learn all the things that Jackie could teach me,” Newkirk said, holding his bride-to-be’s hand. “Now, all the sudden, you’re open to all these experiences. It’s a sense of doing as much as we can, and experiencing as much as we can, with the time we do have.”
Newkirk said when his first wife was sick he still ended up working a lot of overtime at his job as a technician at a hard-disk drive company in Longmont. “I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “You can make a lot of money, but the one thing you can’t make is more time. I think now I concentrate more on living life.”
Not an end
Miller admits she is scared sometimes.
“I’m not scared to die,” she said. “I guess I’m scared of suffering. The process of dying. I have some pretty strong beliefs about death, and what will happen.
“I think you come here to learn lessons, then you go back up to heaven and see if you have more lessons to learn, and if you do, you choose another life.”
Asked what she thinks she’s learned in this life, Miller said, maybe forgiveness. And letting go of fear and its malignant cousin – anger.
“At points in my life, I’ve had an incredible amount of anger,” she said. “That got to be a burden, and I was able to let it go and move on.” Now, even faced with this, she said, she’s never been angry, or thought, ‘Why me?’
“I don’t want to spend my time being angry or scared,” she said. “I want to spend it with the people around me.” She’s visiting with her adult children from a previous marriage, she said, and with her young grandchildren, and with those others she loves like Newkirk, Divorne, and the many friends who have been so helpful and supportive and giving in the past month.
“I’m not scared,” Newkirk said. “I think that has a lot to do with Jackie’s lack of fear. Anyway, I’d be afraid for her, not me.”
“It’s easy not to be afraid with all this love around you,” Miller said, finishing the thought.
“Jackie has spread her caring and love to so many people,” Newkirk said. “It’s like a tidal wave now coming back.”
Editor’s note: While friends of Jackie Miller have committed to raising money to pay for things like next week’s wedding, and Divorne has taken money out of her retirement to pay for the trip to Hawaii, they say donations would be gladly and gratefully accepted. The couple would also like to take a honeymoon trip to London if possible. If you’d like to help, call P.J. Divorne at (970) 302-2588. Divorne is also looking into establishing a fund at a local bank. We will provide more details when they become available.
This story originally ran in The Johnstown (Colorado) Breeze