Remembering Jim

A friend of mine passed away on May 31st of this year. He was not yet 50 years old but had lived a very full life. I met Jim Disney and his wife Aimee when their daughter was a patient in CHOP's pediatric ICU (I was her nurse). Brianna was born with a brain tumor and was in our unit off and on for almost nine months of her first year of life. I sat with them while she was in the OR having most of the tumor removed, and I admitted her several times when her shunt malfunctioned. I got to know Jim and Aimee very well and you could always count on Jim to crack a joke, keep you smiling, and give you a hard time just before he'd give you a big hug. He was a sweet man. Brianna was a flower girl in my wedding and she learned to walk 3 days before the wedding. She was two years old. I remember Jim holding her hand as she walked into the rehearsal lunch. He let go and she kept walking. I said to him, "Jim, don't let go of her, she can't walk" until I realized that she was walking. I started to cry, Aimee cried and Jim had this huge smile on his face. He knew she would walk and she did. Jim wasn't feeling well at the wedding and Aimee said they were going to the doctor soon to get him checked out. I wasn't prepared to hear the news months later. I was in Best Buy and Alex and I were shopping for TVs for our new house and Aimee called me. They found tumors in Jim's abdomen and on his liver. I was in the middle of the store crying knowing that this wasn't going to be good. He later was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer known as PMP which is cancer that resides in the peritoneum. He went through hell and back fighting this for the past three + years. He had numerous surgeries, infections, hospitalizations, and more pain than any human should know. All the while saying, "If my daughter could do this as a baby, I can do this." Aimee took amazing care of him and Brianna through all of this. They were able to go to Disney World last year which was their family's dream. Jim was a police officer who was awarded a medal for saving a child from a burning building in 2001. He was a good man. His pain stopped on May 31st, but Aimee is still hurting so much. It was so hard to see so many people so sad at his funeral. I pray that Aimee can heal after enduring so much, and I hope that Brianna, who's now six, can grow up remembering her daddy.