Husband documents wife's battle with breast cancer through photo series
From summertime beers and beach days to a gravestone marked with his wife's name, 'The Battle We Didn't Choose' showcases Angelo Merendino and his late wife's experience with breast cancer. Merendino is compiling the images into a book.
Comments (44)BY RHEANA MURRAY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2013, 1:44 PM
UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 2013, 12:00 AM
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer and Angelo Merendino on the stoop of their first apartment together, on the upper West Side.
They’re images that would break anyone’s heart.
A husband’s poignant photo series documents the intimate moments of his wife’s fight with breast cancer — and her ultimate death.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Angelo Merendino shaving his wife’s head at the hospital.
“The Battle We Didn’t Choose” shows Jennifer Merendino healthy, drinking beer on the couple’s upper West Side stoop. Then she’s hairless and hooked up to an IV, grimacing in pain at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
The final shot is of her gravestone.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Chemotherapy caused Jennifer Merendino’s hair to fall out.
“I [took] photos when I felt something hit my gut, when it felt like an emotional moment,” Angelo Merendino, 39, said.
He started taking photos during Jennifer’s second round of breast cancer, which struck in April 2010, after she had already endured a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and reconstructive surgery.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino gazes out the window of her hospital room.
“Jen and I had a great support group around us for her first initial treatment in 2008,” Merendino said. “They sent cards, they stopped by, they brought dinner.”
But when the cancer returned two years later, the Merendinos “didn’t feel our family and friends understood how serious things had become.”
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino grimaces in pain during her cancer treatment.
“We needed them to rally like the time they did before,” he said.
It worked.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino with her brain radiation mask.
The photos are personal — one shows a handful of hair that had fallen out, another is so magnified that Jennifer’s shedding eyelashes are visible.
“We thought if people actually saw what was happening, they might better understand it,” said Merendino, a professional photographer. “Talking wasn’t working.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino waits to speak to a radiologist about treatment of her cancer.
“A lot of what you see about breast cancer is glossing over what’s really happened. We felt this would help people understand better how they could be there for a family member or friend. We wanted to show what helped us.”
Jennifer died on December 22, 2011, days after her 40th birthday.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino applying makeup before celebrating the 60th wedding anniversary of her husband’s parents.
Merendino, 39, is now editing the photos into a book, with help from Whitney Johnson, the director of photography at The New Yorker. He’s looking for a publisher.
“I think she would be proud that we turned something so upsetting into something that’s full of love, and that is inspiring others,” he said. “That’s who she was. She made the most of situations.”
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino at the beach.
After his wife’s death, Merendino left New York and moved home to Cleveland, where he and Jennifer originally met in 2005.
Merendino had been applying for a bartender job at a restaurant where Jennifer was a manager.
ANGELO MERENDINO
Jennifer Merendino’s grave in Akron, Ohio.
“I saw Jennifer and just stopped in my tracks,” he remembers. “I knew right away I was going to marry her.”
Months later Jennifer moved to New York, but she and Merendino kept up a friendly relationship on the phone.
“It took me about six months, but I worked up the courage and told her I had a crush on her,” Merendino said. “And she said she felt the same way.”
They dated long distance before Merendino moved to New York. He proposed at the couple’s favorite Italian restaurant, Frank, in the East Village.
They married in Central Park in September 2007.
Jennifer was first diagnosed with breast cancer five months later.
rmurray@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/husband-photos-wife-breast-cancer-battle-article-1.1315041#ixzz2QYf4BZuk
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