A widow who tirelessly cared for her husband for months while cancer destroyed him still cannot afford a simple wooden cross to mark his grave almost a year after he died.
June Dodd cared for husband David day and night for months at her house in Broadwater Crescent, Stevenage, until he died just two days after going into the Garden House Hospice in Letchworth last June.
David moved in with June, 39, in April 2013 after doctors told him there was nothing more they could do after surgery to remove cancer from his brain the previous year had failed. She said: “I did everything for him because he was my best friend.I wanted to look after him in his last years.”
When he moved in, June immediately called the residential home where she cared for adults with learning disabilities and said she couldn’t come in any more.
“It was a very difficult time for me but very rewarding also,” she said.
“I would never leave David alone because he would get stressed.
“I never used to have visitors and would leave my phone on silent because he would get anxious if he heard it ringing.”
The operation left former city worker David with a hole in his skull above his left eye.
This would weep and ooze every day into his eye and June would have to regularly change his dressing and clean it to ensure nothing got infected.
“It was very demanding but I did everything I could for him,” she said.
As June hadn’t been working, after David’s death she had to rely on friends and family to pay for the funeral. Even with this money she couldn’t afford even a simple cross to mark his grave at Stevenage’s Weston Road Cemetery.
“They only cost around £100 but it’s still too much,” she said. “I’m hoping people are generous and help me generate enough cash to buy one.”
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