A heartwarming story at the right time of year

It’s closing in on the holiday season, so I figured you might be in need a good story. Seems that with all that’s going on in this world, we can always use our share this time of year. Maybe that’s why “It’s a Wonderful Life” is on TV about every day this month.

Well, this story is about a couple, Trent and Cordia White, and Cordia’s mom, Gail, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003. Gail was originally given less than a year to live. She made it just past four.

Let me paint a picture of just who Gail was. This was a woman who made the most of her time on earth. She was there for whoever needed her help or her guidance, active in her church, as quick to grab another plate out of the cupboard for the visitor at dinnertime as she was to reach for the last dollar in her purse if someone needed it worse than she did. God and her children were definitely the most important parts of her life. Growing up, Cordia believes her family probably struggled financially, but as kids, they never it. Her mom would never let them.

Trent respected that no matter how someone treated Gail or her family, she never spoke a negative word. Never treated them poorly in return or held grudges. A rare feat in this day and age. And a real Christian in that way, he says.

“My mom, she was really a demonstration of true love,” Cordia says. “I watched her, even when she was on her dying bed and couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything for herself, she was still trying to take care of my dad and make sure he was OK, that we all were OK.”

She effortlessly made you feel at home whenever you stopped over, which for Trent, was often. He first started coming by in high school. Yep, this story gets even better when you realize Trent and Cordia were high school sweethearts who’ve known each other for a little over 20 years, dating for a good portion of that time.

I know what you’re thinking — either you misread the prior sentence or Cordia is, without question, the most patient woman on earth. It’s a lot of the latter. But there was no real pressure because everyone knew they would end up married. Their pastor told them so. Gail, too, was certain of it many years ago. Trent, though devoted to Cordia, knew he wasn’t quite ready for marriage, but he was getting there. As he got older and matured a bit, and having his parents pass away several years earlier, it became more important to him.

“I would find myself, when I was over at their house, just marveling at how close their family was,” Trent says. “I can remember her mother’s 60th birthday and how people really appreciated her and how they felt.”

Cordia lived with her parents for four years during her residency in medical school, forgoing the more convenient apartment near the hospital to make the hour-long commute home every night to share with her sisters and members of the church in caring for her mother.

Mother and daughter grew closer as her mom grew weaker. There were many times when Gail couldn’t sleep through the night, and Cordia would just stay up with her to talk about nothing, to talk about everything. Life, career, fears, joys, becoming a wife. When her condition worsened and Gail entered the hospital, Cordia would curl up next to her in the hospital bed.

“Love wasn’t really expressed like that in my family, so it was something that I found myself wanting to be a part of, and it made me fall in love with her even more,” Trent says. “I knew my mom loved me and my dad loved me. We just didn’t express it all the time. I could count the times on one hand how many times they told me they loved me.”

But things were different when he hung around Cordia’s family. The warmth was genuine, the compliments and adoration sincere and in adundance. And so when Gail took a turn for the worse last spring, and doctors said she had but a few days to live, Trent, who had planned on finally proposing to Cordia during an upcoming trip they had planned to Cancun, decided to pop the question with Gail in mind. He knew, deep down, how much it would mean for Gail to see all three of her daughters get married. He told Cordia to meet him at the courthouse before 5:00.

“For what?” Cordia asked, still laughing at the response.

You can forgive her for missing the point. Poor girl’s mother was near her last breath, her graduation from the residency program was later in the week and now, her boyfriend of some 20 years, was taking an indirect, unromantic (albeit unselfish) route in asking for her hand in marriage. Not only that, he was busy talking the people at the courthouse into holding things open for an extra 20 minutes as she deliberated whether they could even pull it off.

Let’s not be naive here. She had chatted with friends about a wedding before and had even begun making tentative plans, so the idea itself was hardly a shock. But the timeframe, to have to put together the most important day of her life in 48 hours, was a bit overwhelming. It was hectic, but like so many worthwhile endeavors, it had a way in working itself out. The folks at the hospital reserved the chapel, some 30-35 family members and close friends were invited and a beautiful dress that originally was going to be skipped over was instead purchased from “a little joint at the mall” two hours before the ceremony.

And best of all, with the news, Gail got a burst of energy and seemed like she was almost back to her old self. Her eyes were filled with life for the first time in months. The daughter she couldn’t wait to tell people was going to become a doctor, was getting married, to the boy who had become a man, a man she loved like her own son. And she was going to be alive to see it. She was so giddy she was calling it “my wedding,” and no one dared correct her.

The hospital room was flooded with visitors that week, but it’s not like any fire-code violations were reported. Instead, smiles and hugs and stories were shared, and on Thursday evening, a couple that everyone knew was destined to end up together, was married, right in front of their biggest fan.

Later Thursday night, Trent and Cordia joined a few people for a dinner reception, and on Friday, Cordia was back at her mother’s bedside. The energy Gail had the day before had dissipated. She told Cordia she was ready to go if the Lord called on her.

With a heavy heart, Cordia was off to her graduation from residency with her father and sisters. It was to be a second celebration in as many days, and afterward, Trent had reservations at the Signature Room atop they Hancock Building, flowers in hand.

But on the way, Cordia got a call from the hospital. Things had turned from bad to worse with Gail, and their presence was needed. Late that night, with Gail’s eyes open but her mind and body otherwise unresponsive, family and close friends gathered around her bed. A woman from church, who also performed at the wedding, sang Gail’s favorite song with a voice that could give chills in the desert in July.

“She had no movement, but all of a sudden, you see these big tears running down her cheeks,” Cordia says. “It’s like she could hear the song and feel us there.

“I’m sure she was well aware beforehand, but right then, at that moment, it was like she knew she was loved.”

At 6:30 Saturday morning, about a day and a half after the rings were exchanged, Gail passed away. She was 61.

A whirlwind week for Cordia. How one person can handle all that...

“And she’s so emotional to begin with,” Trent says of his new wife with a smile, putting his hand on her knee.

That’s OK, all women are, I assured him.

“Yeah, but she’s a little extra,” he offers back, drawing a loud laugh from his wife.

The Cancun trip that was supposed to be part of Trent’s proposal became their honeymoon, and Cordia, once a believer in “the whole big thing” when it comes to a wedding with 300 guests and all the pomp and circumstance, suddenly was just fine with what she had.

“It was just our families, and it was very intimate and very special to me,” she says. “It was all I need, and it’s amazing to me that that’s all I need because I know what I used to want, or what I thought I wanted.”

But what Cordia really wanted, what was more important, as it turns out, was one more positive memory with the woman she cherished most, and the chance to make her glow one last time.

And all I wanted was to give you a good story this holiday season. This would seem to qualify, don’t you think?

Trent Modglin
Publisher
The Real Chicago
Trent@TheRealChicago.org

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