Dale Rouse has no idea when he’ll die. He just knows he’s sick and he knows he’s still madly in love.
Doctors discovered a cancerous tumor near the back of his throat in 2010 and told him he wouldn’t last another year. Four years later—with 117 chemotherapy treatments and 127 radiation treatments in the rear-view mirror—Dale isn’t taking chances with what little time he believes he has left.
Facing his mortality, Dale wanted to renew his wedding vows with the love of his life, Lorraine Rouse, to whom he’s been married to for 33 years. The pair met in 1978 and they’ve been inseparable since; they’ve never worked a job where they didn’t work together.
Dale and Lorraine renewed the wedding vows they made exactly 33 years ago to the day on Sept. 18, as more than 50 friends huddled around them at a ranch in San Martin.
“I’d heard of other people renewing their vows and we had talked about renewing them when we reached our 40th anniversary,” Dale said after they’d exchanged vows. “But it will never be a possibility. I won’t be here when we reach 40. It means a hell of a lot to me.”
“I felt proud and sad at the same time. It was really, really hard,” Lorraine said, fighting back tears as she recalled her emotions during the ceremony. “I was feeling in check because I knew how he was feeling and I didn’t want it to be worse.”
In 2002, the Rouses sold their home, bought an RV and took their lives to the road. Since a Kansas doctor first discovered Dale’s tumor during a checkup for a sore knee, the pair has been living in Gilroy for chemotherapy and radiation treatments. His doctors recently ceased traditional chemotherapy.
“Dale is very, very sick,” Lorraine said. “(He) has good and bad days handling his illness and he believes his time on Earth is short.”
While Dale was feeling better on their anniversary, his health fluctuates between extremes, according to Lorraine. Sometimes, when Dale can’t get out of bed, she doesn’t know what to do. She wonders if calling a doctor, even 9-1-1, would help.
“All of these things go through your mind when you know that your spouse is so sick and you don’t know how much time they have left,” Lorraine said.
But what’s kept Dale and Lorraine going is their love for each other and determination to make the most out of life—together.
“A lot of people will let this cancer thing get to them mentally and I can’t say that it doesn’t at times,” Dale said. “You can sit around and cry about it, but it ain’t going to cure it. So I try to keep a positive attitude about it and I try to keep busy. There’s many a morning I’ll lay in bed and think how I don’t want to get up today. I can lay here and wallow in my pity and not get up—and maybe not get up tomorrow. Or I can get my lazy butt out of bed and do something. I just say I’ve got to tough it out, and I tough it out through the day and keep on trucking.”
The Rouses landed a job in Gilroy three years ago when they visited See Grins RV intent on buying an RV. They bought one, but also walked away with jobs working in the business’ kitchen cooking hamburgers for customers and made friends they still hold dear today.
“Dale’s a people person and he’s got a bundle of energy,” said Tim Jasper, sales manager at See Grins. “This man still wants to work full time and he’s on his deathbed. It blows me away. They just go out of their way to help other people. But we’re days away (from death) and people know it. There are so many people who love this man.”
Jasper said See Grins employees rallied together to provide a venue for Dale and Lorraine’s anniversary. Behind the scenes, many of the friends the pair made during their cross-country travels made the trek—some as far as Topeka, Kansas—to be there Sept. 18.
“We even had friends we didn’t even know were going to be here,” Lorraine said. “It was absolutely amazing that our friends are so thoughtful. It was an amazing event. It was beautiful.”
Dale and Lorraine Rouse met at a chicken ranch in San Marcos, Calif. in 1978. Dale was the foreman, working on a project at the time to turn cattle manure into chicken feed, while Lorraine worked in the office.
“I only saw him when he came for meetings once or twice a week. He caught my eye because he had a lot of enthusiasm and he seemed to be a guy who was truly on the ball. I can’t explain it exactly,” Lorraine said. “When he went on vacation, they had me answering the phones during the lunch break and he had to call his boss to make sure everything was ok. I found myself waiting for him to call. It was just a feeling of wanting to get to know him better.”
Lorraine eventually became Dale’s secretary and they quickly became friends. They began dating and ultimately married in 1981. Since then, the pair has visited all 50 states—48 in an RV—and worked alongside each other since meeting on that chicken ranch, from travelling the states to sell tractor seats to owning a furniture store.
“She’s just a great woman,” Dale said. “Everything just came together. I couldn’t have asked for a better 33 years.”
