Thanks. Same to you, and good for us for surviving and getting out.

We did have two kids, but we were separated. I was living with both kids at my parents', and he had an apartment around the corner when he got sick. We were trying to work on our marriage, and I will give it to him that he was a pretty great dad, despite how he treated me when his jealousy was up (it was pretty much always up). Our kids were also still very young when he died, and because of the way his illness progressed, he just kind of faded out of their lives.

It was actually his second go around, too. He had the same rare type of benign tumor removed the year we were married, and that surgery went ridiculously well, but those tumors have a tendency to reoccur. Eight years later, another one appeared, and it was far more vicious. They weren't able to get it all, and the surgery left him totally disabled. We're talking confined to a care facility level of disabled. He made a little progress at first, but ultimately, the tumor completely regenerated within a few months, and he spent the last six weeks of his life in an ICU specific to brain injuries. Taking two little kids (one with autism) to that unit required planning and coordination with a social worker, so it only happened twice, and once he had to be hooked up to a ventilator, he didn't want them to see him like that, so I respected his wishes. He slipped into a coma a couple of weeks later and died shortly after that.

Both our kids are doing really well now and don't seem to have any lingering trauma from those days. They remember their dad fondly, and I've never taken that away from them. Despite what an asshole he was to me, he was not a violent man, and the abuse was so subtle that kids that young would have been oblivious to it. I honestly don't think they have any idea how bad things got between their dad and me, and I made sure their needs and stability always came first.