Potomac author pays tribute to his late wife

Readers may be forgiven if they, too, get choked up, whether out of a sense of sympathy for Porreco or because their family has faced similar challenges.

In addition to being Porreco’s wife, Marie was also mother to five, grandmother to seven and great-grandmother to three.

The book chronicles the last two years of Marie’s illness, which were haunted by dementia and cancer, but also blessed by small moments of joy.

‘‘Marie realized occasionally the state she was in, but most of the time she was pretty happy,” Porreco says.

She developed an appreciation for Jerry Seinfeld on television and Billy Joel on the radio. And she lost some of the inhibitions instilled during her strict upbringing.

‘‘She would appreciate bawdy humor when she never had before,” Porreco says.

A former dean of Georgetown University’s Graduate School, Porreco has published previous books, including several he refers to as philosophy fiction or ‘‘phi-fi.” He knows his wife would be shocked to learn he published a book about her. When she was alive, she did not like the idea of his writing about her, even in fiction.

But Porreco defends ‘‘Marie Was Mine” as a love story and a tribute.

The book opens with journal entries Porreco made nearly two years before his wife died. If that doesn’t seem as romantic as writing about a decorated war hero courting his young sweetheart in New York’s Greenwich Village, there’s something to be said for a relationship that stands the test of difficult times.

‘‘When you love someone, and you get to know them after 58 years, you know the good things and the bad,” Porreco says. ‘‘After a while, you don’t mind the bad things.”

In his tribute, Porreco does not gloss over the difficulties in caring for someone who is ill. There are references to severe nosebleeds, medication dosages and visits from Montgomery Hospice. Although he edited some entries that were potentially embarrassing to people surrounding the couple, Porreco says he did not want to turn the book into a ‘‘vacuous, empty story.” Still, he notes he would not have published ‘‘Marie Was Mine” while his wife was still living.

To help round out the story of his wife’s life and illness, he includes chapters written by other family members, and also earlier works by Marie herself.

‘‘The truth of anything that tells the story of a life is very subjective,” Porreco says. ‘‘It’s not like metaphysical truth.”

Porreco’s wife had seen others struggle with aging and terminal illnesses. She studied nursing before she married and worked as a geriatric nurse at the Hebrew Home in Rockville after the couple’s five children were older.

The couple also cared for Porreco’s mother-in-law, who lived with them for seven years before she died.

‘‘That experience helped,” Porreco says. ‘‘I expected the worst [with Marie’s illness], and was pleased when it wasn’t so bad.”

In addition to mourning the woman he married, Porreco misses taking care of his wife the way a nurse might miss taking care of a patient.

‘‘You miss doing that,” he insists. ‘‘Taking care of people, you begin to appreciate what humanity means. You empathize more with the needs of people.”

Porreco, 86, remains attuned to his family and their concerns for him. He considers himself ‘‘pretty independent,” and still takes care of his house, cooks for his family when they visit, and chops wood for his fireplace.

‘‘My daughter insists I wear a medical alert” device in case he is stricken while exerting himself, he says.

The book describes poignantly the moment his daughter Catherine realized how fearful Porreco was that he might die while still caring for his wife, who by then was incapable of dialing a phone for help and would have been terrified to be left on her own.

For children who have recently lost an aging mother or father, Porreco advises them to stay close to the other parent. He says he worries about surviving spouses who have no children.

Even though his wife had been sick for several years before her death, Porreco was not prepared for the difficulty of the past two years.

‘‘I was too busy to feel grief” while she was sick, he says. ‘‘Missing her is a terrible thing.”

‘‘Marie Was Mine” ($22.99 trade paperback; $32.99 cloth hardback, Xlibris) is available online at amazon.com and xlibris.com.