This Is Not A Sad Story

Miller, 48, smoked as a teen-ager, and then again briefly about five years ago. The cancer has spread to the lining of her lungs and into her lymph nodes. Doctors are trying chemotherapy to slow things down, but that’s all it will do. Plainly put, she is dying. But that’s not the way Jackie Miller intends to live the rest of her life.

“This is just another leg of the journey,” she said, “and I don’t want it to be about fear.” Instead, she said, she wants it to be about growth, and a testament to the love and friendship she said has brightly bloomed in this otherwise dark time.

June 14 in Greeley, Miller will marry her boyfriend, Jim Newkirk, whom she has been with for about two years and who she has lived with in Johnstown for about a year. Friends at North Colorado Medical Center, where she worked as a nurse, are organizing the event, which will include a bridal shower this weekend.

Later this month, her friend of about 20 years, P.J. Divorne, who calls Miller her “sister of everything but blood,” will take her on a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, where the two visited before together several years ago. In addition, Divorne has been helping around Miller and Newkirk’s house; cleaning, cooking meals, and taking Jackie to doctor’s appointments and chemo treatments when Newkirk’s schedule won’t allow it.

“Jackie is like family,” Divorne said. “I don’t have a big one. She’s helped me through some dark times in my life. She read the eulogy at my mother’s funeral and was there for me when my dad died. Always with unconditional love.

“I’m not doing this to pay anything back,” she said.