This is Marcia, wife of theplainstruth. Thank you all so much for your comments and condolences about my dear husband. He absolutely loved this message board. He often shared with me things about you guys, read me his posts (mostly the political ones) and shared your responses - often with a hearty laugh. As most of you have noted, he never really focused on his illness so unless you were with him every day personally, you wouldn't know how bad he was. He wouldn't let us focus on it either. He was a pillar of strength and such an example of faith for my family. He had been doing quite well (considering he had terminal cancer) until Friday 6/12. He was struggling so much between 6/12 and the day he finally let me take him to the doctor on Wednesday 6/ 17. (He just kept telling me it was part of cancer and he had to be tougher.) That day we found how that one of his lungs had collapsed - the doctors were amazed he made it that long. He had emergency surgery and was doing okay - had a great Father's Day with our kids - then in the late hours of Father's Day, his other lung collapsed. Andrew (TPT) was logged on to this board in the wee hours of Monday morning (he loved reading your posts) and also playing cards online - even though he was struggling to breathe. He kept telling me he was okay when I knew he wasn't. He was trying to get me to sleep and I would doze and then sense him struggling. It took me a while to get him to let me call the nurse and to get him to put the computer down and try to rest. During the day on Monday, he wound up having two chest tubes inserted with no anesthesia - he was absolutely the toughest man I've ever encountered! He went to ICU that Monday and things went down very quickly - too quickly. The ICU nurses remarked that they had seen a lot of cancer patients come in at this particular stage and had never encountered anyone with such faith, strength and peace in his spirit. That was my soul mate!
He was truly a humble man - he would argue his convictions and as you have noted, would stand firm in his beliefs while still respecting the rights of others to disagree. He had no idea the impact he made on others - he would never have believed that he would be missed on this board or that anyone thought very highly of him at all.
I just wanted to thank you all for your comments, thank you for sharing a love for Auburn with him, for making him smile and giving him a sounding board over the past year or so. What you encountered was only a glimpse of this great man - the love of my life, my best friend, my soul mate. My life has a huge void - a hole in my heart. I am doing my best to walk with the faith that he lived to get me through.
As my daughter commented in an earlier post - we are going to try to establish a scholarship to Auburn in Andrew's memory. It will take us a while to get this started -but I (or one of my children) will post details when the time comes for anyone who wants to keep Andrew's memory alive.
Again, thank and WAR EAGLE!
Marcia
P.S.
If you haven't read his obituary, it was mostly written by my children and can be found on his caringbridge site - www. caringbridge.org/visit/andrewfrederick. I am very blessed - he left a great legacy with our children.
