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Woman Spent Husband’s Final Months Creating ‘Wonderful Memories.’  His Last Words Were ‘I Love You’ (Exclusive)
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Woman Spent Husband’s Final Months Creating ‘Wonderful Memories.’ His Last Words Were ‘I Love You’ (Exclusive)

“I want the whole world to know how much that man loved us,” Lorelai Mentzer told PEOPLE of husband Patrick, who died of cancer in May

<p>M.  Palmer Photography</p>  Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

M. Palmer Photography

Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

Just weeks after Lorelai Mentzer learned she was pregnant, her husband Patrick, then 35, was diagnosed with colon cancer. By the time their son was born in August 2021, they thought he was cancer-free, but it came back and spread. Still, the couple was determined to “squeeze every ounce of joy out of every single day” they had left.

“The most important part of our story is just making the best of it, and still creating all these wonderful memories, even in these last days,” Lorelai, 32, told PEOPLE before she died on May 11 at the age of 37.

“I knew in my heart I would lose him this year,” she said. “I’m trying to be grateful for what we had.”

Related: Couple with Same Terminal Illness Found ‘Joy’ Together and Married. She Held His Hand in His Final Moments

The couple met on Tinder about 10 years ago shortly after Lorelai moved from Kentucky to her parents’ home in Virginia. “The first time I heard his voice on the phone, I was sitting down and I still felt my knees go weak,” she shared.

After getting engaged over Christmas in 2016, they married the following September. “Some people take a full year to plan a wedding,” she said. “I couldn’t wait.”

Neither could he. “The night before, I went up to go to bed and finished my vows. He kept coming upstairs to steal kisses,” she recalled. “He was just so excited.”

<p>Luke Mazurek</p>  Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

Luke Mazurek

Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

In 2020, Lorelai learned she was pregnant around Thanksgiving. That January, Patrick woke up in the middle of the night with significant GI bleeding. When they first got to the emergency room, they were told it was probably just hemorrhoids.

But a colonoscopy detected a small tumor.

“It was out of nowhere,” she said. “He seemed to be in perfect health.”

<p>Kristy Mackenzie</p>  Lorelai and Patrick Mentzer

Kristy Mackenzie

Lorelai and Patrick Mentzer

Do you have a love story the world needs to know? Send the details to [email protected] for a chance to be featured in Real-Life Love, People.com’s series dedicated to sharing extraordinary connections and heartfelt gestures.

In August 2021, a little over a month after Patrick finished chemo, their son Jamie was born, and for a while, the couple didn’t “have that cancer cloud” hanging over them, she said.

<p>Bethany Masone Harar</p>  Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

Bethany Mason Harar

Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

Everything changed again that December, when Patrick went for a routine scan. Hours later he learned there were five new lesions on his liver.

“Friday night was just shock and Googling. Saturday was crying and funeral-planning,” she said. By the end of the weekend, she had joined the Colontown Facebook group and learned about clinical trials at the Memorial Sloan Keterring Cancer Center.

Related: Husband Thinks It’s 1993 as He Wakes Up from Accident. Then He Recovers — and Proposes to Wife Again

As he continued treatment, the family endured another shock they never saw coming: Lorelai and her husband were on vacation over Father’s Day weekend in 2022 when her parents Andrew and Kristy Mackenzie — who shared their journey in a previous Real-Life Love story — were injured in a near-fatal motorcycle accident that left her father thinking it was 1993.

“I said to Patrick, ‘Watch us get through this recovery for mom and dad, and then your cancer comes back. Watch this take the rest of this time that we were hoping to be free and happy,’” she remembered.

When her father got his memory back, he proposed to Lorelai’s mother again and Patrick agreed to officiate their vow renewal ceremony in August.

A week before the trip to the Outer Banks, Patrick received some discouraging test results, but the couple still “tried to have the best vacation of our lives,” Lorelai says.

<p>M.  Palmer Photography</p>  Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer with family

M. Palmer Photography

Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer with family

By March of this year, the bulk of Patrick’s liver was riddled with tumors, and Lorelai booked one more family vacation with the knowledge that it would be their last.

The next month, he was in hospice care. On days when he felt okay, she took him outside to sit on the patio with friends. “I told him, ‘Thank you for this life,’” she recalled. “I tell him he’s done an incredible job, and that he’s been braver and he’s pushed through more than anybody should ever have to.”

Related: Colo. Man Battling Incurable Cancer Marries Fiancée: 'We Suddenly Saw That We Didn't Have Forever'

She kept a camera in her bedroom recording moments of the family with their toddler as well as framed photos, aiming to surround her with happy memories. “I feel like it’s my job to make sure that he knows that he led a beautiful life, and he created a beautiful life for me,” she told PEOPLE just hours before she died.

When he woke from his nap on Tuesday, May 11, Lorelai asked if he wanted to see Jamie. He said yes. He heard his son laugh and smiled before muttering “I love you,” and drifting into a coma.

Later that evening, she told him it was time for him to rest. He took a last breath and then “he was gone,” she said.

<p>M.  Palmer Photography</p>  Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

M. Palmer Photography

Patrick and Lorelai Mentzer

On June 29, what would have been his 38th birthday, Lorelai plans to hold a celebration. She wants people to remember her joyfully. And every day she talks to Jamie about him.

“I tell him, ‘Daddy did absolutely everything for him. Daddy pushed through all the chemo, every single treatment, more than anybody should ever have to go through,'” she said. “And still was the best daddy out of anybody I know.”

<p>M.  Palmer Photography</p>  Lorelai and Patrick Mentzer with son Jaime

M. Palmer Photography

Lorelai and Patrick Mentzer with son Jaime

Less than 24 hours before Patrick passed away on May 11, he shared a video on TikTok of the couple sharing kisses and kind words. The clip has since garnered over 32 million views, 3 million likes and 113K comments.

Lorelai soon began receiving “the most beautiful messages from all over the world” and has since
created a GoFundMe to finance a foundation in her husband’s name. She hopes that it will help other families afford the “hidden costs of cancer.” Another fundraiser has also been set up on behalf of their son.

“I love that all over the world, now people know Patrick’s story and what he did for us,” she said. “Ultimately, my goal now is just to make sure that he’s remembered in the way that I remember him.”

“I want the whole world to know how much that man loved us,” she added.

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Read the original article on People.