Around the end of the 2017 fall harvest, Tessa Martinson’s husband Jon fell ill with what was later revealed to be a melanoma which metastasized to his liver and lungs. Overwhelmed with taking care of their kids and being Jon’s pseudo-nurse, Tessa had to learn how to put her faith into other people instead of just doing it all on her own.
The fall harvest that started it all
The 2017 fall harvest had just finished when Tessa Martinson’s husband Jon began showing worrying symptoms from hypersomnia to various headaches throughout the week. Though not unusual for him to have a slight cold or a bit of drowsiness after working all season, he was typically more energetic even while preparing for the winter season. The couple would take various trips to the doctor’s office and “checked off all the boxes as we continued to go back. It wasn’t mono. It wasn’t Lyme disease. It wasn’t you know, all of the things you need to check first.”
In January of the next year, they eventually switched doctors to see if a specialist could figure it out. There, it was revealed that a melanoma Jon had removed five years ago was coming back stronger than ever as it had metastasized to his liver, lungs, and brain.
He was immediately given radiation treatments on his brain and oral medication for his lungs and liver. Briefly, he went back to work since the owners of the farm he worked on were very accommodating.
A moment of relief
For a while, things were looking up as they went with their two children Gentry and AJ to visit Tessa’s family in Oregon. It was almost like old times until Jon’s coughing returned. Tessa wanted to believe this was only because Oregon was notorious for grass fires, stating that “I just thought it’s got to be that smoke. It’s got to be the allergies. It’s got to be something and not wanting to go there in my mind that things weren’t going well.”
When they got back from the trip, his headaches were getting more frequent because of the pressure from the tumors in his brain. So he did another round of radiation that was affecting his speech and thought processes but miraculously kept his personality intact. One case of this was when the nurses visited the family to check up on him he would say “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you sure do a good job.”
Around the end of that summer, things started to change for the family. They had to withdraw from the Inheritance of Hope Legacy Retreat® their friends recommended they participate in because Jon’s health was declining so rapidly. Whenever the family got used to new meds or a new dosage, Jon’s would either have unexpected improvements or problems with his symptoms and for Tessa this unpredictability was especially apparent. “You kind of get your head wrapped around one phase. And then there’s a few more days of not wanting to get out of bed or being able to get out of bed and I felt like my head was kind of spinning and not knowing what to expect.”
Though struggling with the highs and lows of terminal illness, their family, friends, and children still made an effort to include Jon by continuing to be “part of his days in coming to visit or read scripture. Our kids would crawl up in bed with him and read to him or just take naps there.”
Receiving help in hard times
Eventually, the family was told that Jon needed to be put on hospice. Nurses reassured Tessa that she just needed to be “a wife and a mom. You don’t need to be the nurse too” whenever she was feeling guilty about needing help with taking care of Jon. Noting that, “Caregivers do so much out of love and commitment that we have for our loved one, and I think that sometimes we feel like we shouldn’t pass off that responsibility because like I promised in sickness and in health to take care of you.”
Jon was on hospice for two weeks before passing away in October of 2018. Tessa was heartbroken but found comfort in her faith, stating that “there’s nothing worse than losing a parent or a spouse…like there’s a gaping hole in what should be your family unit. But our next steps and our next days were just trusting that all of God’s faithfulness would continue.”
After realizing that Tessa and her family couldn’t make it to one of the 2018 Legacy Retreats®, the Inheritance of Hope staff would support Tessa virtually. Always giving the family their condolences, sending them birthday messages, and keeping them up to date on new developments.
One of these developments would be a mini retreat made specifically for widows and widowers like Tessa to talk about their experiences grieving their partners. Tessa would attend this one because while she “had a wonderful network of support and our church family and our extended family in the area really cared for us along the way,” she couldn’t just go back to “normal” like everyone else and pretend the last few years weren’t as difficult as they really were for her. Instead, she wanted to find “those connections of other people who understood what we had gone through where all our stories are a little bit different but just kind of common ground of terminal illness, caregiving, and young children that we’re walking through grief with.”
Feeling less isolated, Tessa wanted to embrace the Inheritance of Hope community all the way. She still stays in touch with all the people she went on the mini retreat with and even volunteered for a few programs herself before coming on staff and helping create the Hope Hub™ program in 2022 because for her “just knowing that the mission of supporting and walking alongside families with something so meaningful to us and then to be able to do that with other families and be a part of their story has really been an honor.”
Tessa and her children at a Hope Hub™ gathering
And for the first time, she felt that through the combination of her faith and her multiple support units, “there wasn’t alarm. There wasn’t panic. I think it felt like this kind of steadfast peace that this is the worst thing we’ve experienced, but God’s going to be faithful to us and whatever it looks like, we don’t know in the days to come.”
Hear more of Tessa’s story on the Inheritance of Hope Podcast. Listen now >>
Kennedy Owens a Storytelling Intern at Inheritance of Hope. She is currently a sophomore at Florida Southern College with a major in advertising and public relations, and is an active participant on her school campus as the Event Coordinator for the Young Adults Self Advocates club and Brand Manager for the school’s radio station The Hiss. She enjoys all things writing-related and likes to serve her community the best she can.