Ed Urbaniak, left, and Erwin Lobo hit it off from the start. They moved in together, adopted two children and were living a happy life. But after Lobo was diagnosed with cancer, the two decided it was time to get married.
The couple wed on Aug. 14 before 50 guests in the garden of the Meridian House in Washington.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
By January 2000, Urbaniak knew he wanted more than just a relationship; he wanted love that could sustain a family. He set up an AOL Web site titled "My Next Man," asking for a guy under 6 feet tall who considered himself a Christian and was interested in eventually having children.
"My degree is engineering, you have to understand that I have lists of things," says Urbaniak, who graduated from West Point Military Academy, spent nine years in the Army and is now a realtor.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
Lobo, who had just moved to New York City from the Philippines that February, saw Urbaniak's site and was impressed by his upfront nature. The two began chatting regularly, discussing their current lives and hopes.
The couple's wedding rings were passed between the guests for a blessing at the ceremony.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
In mid-June they set up a date at a coffee shop in Chelsea. Lobo showed up an hour late. He was new to the subway system and didn't have a cell phone. By the time they moved on to dinner at a Thai restaurant, all was forgiven.
Urbaniak reached across the table to hold Lobo's hand. "I suddenly felt connected to him," says Lobo, a 37-year-old marketing professional.
"I immediately felt that this person is really somebody I'd like to spend more time with."
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
It was mutual: After two weeks of dating, Urbaniak invited Lobo home to meet his parents in Buffalo for July 4th. That October, Lobo got a job offer in Washington and Urbaniak, now 45, signed on with a D.C. company the next month to be with him. They bought a house, moved in together and began to live their lives as one.
"Right from the very start I felt like we'd been doing this for a long, long time," says Lobo. "Our souls felt connected, or something," adds Urbaniak.
Here, Lobo reads his vows as their children Leon, center, and Emilo watch.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
On their one-year anniversary, Urbaniak asked Lobo to marry him. Lobo declined; he didn't want to go forward without the blessing of Urbaniak's Catholic parents.
They put the idea aside, reasoning that it was just a piece of paper, and "in our eyes we felt like we were married anyway," says Urbaniak. By the end of the year, they started planning for children.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
By 2007, the couple had the family of their dreams. They'd adopted two sons, Leon and Emilio. But when Lobo took Leon to a doctor who wouldn't discuss the boy's care because Lobo wasn't his legal father -- Urbaniak was -- they began to think more about the importance of that "piece of paper."
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
The foursome got on with their lives, busy with work and school, commuting and travel. Late the next year, Lobo was in Paris with a friend when he began having severe back pain. An x-ray revealed a mass in his lung. Originally, it was diagnosed as tuberculosis. But a culture didn?t show the infection.
After one doctor said the mass couldn't be biopsied, Lobo found another who said it could. Two days after the procedure, in March 2009, Lobo and Urbaniak found out it was cancer.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
Doctors told the couple Lobo could expect to live six to 12 months, though his prognosis might be better because his body was young and otherwise healthy. He began chemotherapy that April.
The prospect of a new reality set in for both men: "When you're dating somebody, you just don't think about that type of thing -- you think about that as being a million years away," Urbaniak says.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
Lobo continued working full-time and by the end of the summer he was done with six rounds of chemo that had successfully shrunk the tumor.
In Sept., Lobo started getting headaches and had to get an MRI. By the time he drove home that day the doctor had already called Urbaniak to say the cancer had spread to Lobo's brain.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
Radiation left Lobo devoid of energy, but seemed to be working. But when an MRI after Christmas showed that the brain cancer had spread. Lobo was told he had one to two months to live and to get his affairs in order.
In Feb., Lobo flew to the Philippines for his grandmother's funeral. He kneeled beside her casket and prayed, "Please take this away from me -- I want to see my kids grow up."
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
In March, with Lobo on new medication, the couple took a trip to Asia that they'd been talking about for years. During their travels, they met a California winery owner on his way to see the Dalai Lama. The vintner took a bracelet blessed by the Lama from his own wrist and tied it around Lobo's, promising to ask the holy man to pray for him.
A scan in May showed that the brain cancer had cleared completely.
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
As a surprise for Lobo, Urbaniak secretly entered a wedding contest sponsored by Crate & Barrel. They didn't win, but were put in touch with an organization called Wish Upon a Wedding that hosts weddings for couples facing a terminal illness or some other severe hardship. The organization immediately offered to throw the couple a wedding, with services donated by local vendors.
Their wedding day was, in Lobo's words, "a celebration of life."
"I'm very, very lucky," he says. "A lot of people just leave their homes and get shot or get in an accident. They won't have the chance to say goodbye to their families."
Mark Gail-The Washington Post
Gallery Credits:
Photo Editor, Producer Troy Witcher
Text Editor Sarah Anne Hughes
