John Edwards is sick

[hlthe2b]

50. She forgave him and included him for the benefit of the kids...

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/10/elizabeth-and-john-edwards-partners-in-the-end-for-the-family-t/

Elizabeth Edwards spent her final days in the round-the-clock company of her tearful husband, the two of them linked by family, tragedy and maybe even love, despite the stunning political soap opera that destroyed their marriage. It led to a legal separation, but not to separate lives.
Perhaps the most unexpected aspect of Elizabeth's death Tuesday at 61, from the cancer she had fought since 2004, was the presence of her estranged husband, John. She spent two years trying to make the marriage work after learning of his affair with Rielle Hunter, the videographer for his 2008 presidential campaign. The couple even renewed their vows in 2007 on their 30th anniversary.

Last January, after John finally admitted he was the father of Hunter's child and Elizabeth went to a hotel to meet the toddler, Elizabeth told her sister that "I've had it." The pair lived apart from then on -- but when her time grew short, he became a constant presence at the family home.
"He spent her last days with her pretty much around the clock," said Raleigh attorney Bonnie Weyher, a close friend of Elizabeth's since their law school days. "Obviously there was hurt and there was anger and all kinds of emotions. But in the end he was there with her. That speaks volumes."
The trajectory of this North Carolina couple is well known: They met as law students in Chapel Hill, got married, had a son, Wade, and a daughter, Cate. John gained spectacular success as a trial lawyer. Then the sharp turns: Wade's death at 16 in a freak car accident, their decision to have two more children late in life, John's upset win in a 1998 Senate race, the 2004 presidential campaign that catapulted him onto the national ticket with John Kerry, Elizabeth's cancer diagnosis the day after the 2004 election, the collapse of it all after a second presidential bid and three years of deception, and Elizabeth's controversial decisions to encourage her husband's 2008 campaign at two crucial junctures -- after learning of his affair at the tail end of 2006, and three months later when her cancer returned.

After all that history, perhaps inevitably, their lives remained intertwined, even as Elizabeth scored him in print and interviews for his "terrible" behavior and his evolution from "that sweet man I loved for so long" to "the John of today." There was a practical element running through their interactions. Their two youngest children, Emma Claire and Jack, are only 12 and 10 years old. Their parents arranged visits, attended school events and sports games, talked logistics. "I really don't think a day went by when he wasn't in contact with her," Weyher said. "I think they talked every day, and if she needed something, he would help her with it."
Last summer, John went along when Elizabeth wanted to show her children Japan, where she had lived for nine years as a child in a Navy family. Lest anyone get the idea that the couple were reconciling, Elizabeth made clear to People magazine that John would be going as a father, not a husband. He'll be "an enormous help" with the children, she said, and added: "Of course, the sleeping arrangements will be different."
Glenn Bergenfield, a Princeton, N.J. lawyer and lifelong friend of both John and Elizabeth, said the pair had remained partners in raising their children. "He's been a loving and devoted dad, and despite the grief over what's happened and the regrets I'm sure he has, we all hope he continues to succeed there," he said in an interview.
He cast John's presence in Elizabeth's life and at her bedside as part of her wish to see him be the best father he can be to Jack and Emma Claire. "Whatever their personal issues were as a couple ... one thing that Elizabeth was emphatic about and at peace with was she wanted John to succeed. She wanted John to continue to be a really great father," he said.
Weyher didn't disagree. But she talked as well of the deep love she believes the two still shared. "He was the love of her life. Those feelings just don't go away. He was with her at the end. She wanted him there," she told me. As for John, "I haven't asked him to explain himself, but I don't doubt for a minute that he always loved Elizabeth. He never stopped loving her."
Now that she's gone, Weyher added, "I think he's devastated. He's functioning the best that he can for the sake of the children. But I've seen him with tears in his eyes, repeatedly. He's feeling this loss very deeply." Asked if she thought Elizabeth had forgiven him, she replied, "I do."
Over the past year, it was practicality and not sentiment that appeared to dictate Elizabeth's choices. She wanted to sell the couple's palatial 28,000-square-foot home, but her health began to decline and the family still lives there. She reportedly had divorce papers ready -- suggesting she wanted to make a clean break -- but did not file them, also because of her health. She did not shut her husband out of her life or her children's. He was going to be their sole parent when she was gone, and as her health declined, she increasingly needed his help.
Her children were foremost on her mind. As John and the children toured a ship in Japan, she unburdened herself to Josh Fryday, a former campaign aide now stationed in Japan as a JAG lawyer for the Navy. "She feared most for her children, and what would happen to them when she was gone. How would they fare without a mother?" Fryday wrote at CNN.com after her death. "She wanted to see Cate get married and watch the kids grow up."
Cate, 28, an attorney in Washington, is engaged to her longtime boyfriend, third-year medical resident Trevor Upham, Weyher said, and "they'll have their own life." Still, Bergenfield predicted "a brutal road ahead" for all family and friends, especially the two younger children. Elizabeth prepared them for her death "as well as one can," he said, and did everything she could to smooth John's path as a single father. "He's really an excellent father," he said of John. "The kids think that, and that's the beginning and the end of it."
Bergenfield was Wade's godfather and now he is Jack's. Asked about the relationship between John and Elizabeth, he returned repeatedly to their merits as parents and their partnership in raising their children. He offered no wishful or sentimental assessment of how they might have felt about each other in the end.
But maybe it's appropriate to mention here that Bergenfield was there at the beginning. He is the one who introduced John and Elizabeth to each other at law school and is even described sometimes as having talked them into going out. He says that's overstating his role. "They liked each other," he told me. "They would have found a way to each other."
They did find a way back to each other at the end, for the sake of the children.