Minneapolis Widow Remembers Her Husband, 'Spider-Man'

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Aaron Purmort was best remembered as a mild-mannered art director by day, crime fighting superhero by night. He was, in fact, Spiderman. At least that's what Purmort and his wife Nora would have you believe. Together they wrote Mr. Purmort's obituary that ran this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And Nora McInerny Purmort joins me to explain. Welcome to the program and, first of all, we're, of course, so very sorry for your loss.

NORA MCINERNY PURMORT: Thanks, Melissa.

BLOCK: Would you mind reading for us the first line of the obituary that you wrote with your husband?

PURMORT: Yeah, sure. Purmort, Erin Joseph, age 35 died peacefully at home on November 25 after complications from a radioactive spider bite that led to years of crime-fighting and a year's long battle with the nefarious criminal named cancer, who has plagued our society for far too long.

BLOCK: Now how did you, with your husband, decide to write that?

PURMORT: Aaron was a huge Spiderman fan - a big nerd. And he had this beautiful, sparkling sense of humor his entire life. And his illness didn't fade that at all. So we had a pretty, I guess, irreverent sense of humor and we joked around a lot, like, throughout his sickness. And, you know, like, he'd, like, called his, like, chemo pills chemo grigio. He just, like, had all these, like, funny jokes. And when he was given, you know, the hospice option, that day we'd went home and we'd been really good at kind of taking care of, like, all the business and clerical aspects of being sick so that we wouldn't have to spend, you know, the last, most important parts of his life going through that. But we'd never written the obituaries. So we sat up the night and we laughed so hard and we were just, you know, this big pile of, like, tears and snot, and this is what we came up with.

BLOCK: I've been looking through the blog that you've been keeping through your husband's illness. He had brain cancer. It's called my husband's tumor. And you say there it's not a cancer story, it's a love story with some cancer.

PURMORT: Yeah.

BLOCK: And you're very, very open throughout the blog about what was going on and the progress of his illness. How did you decide to start writing about that?

PURMORT: I have always been a writer. And, like, this happened and just nothing slowed down. So I'd started the tumblr and it was set private. There was a password on it and nobody could read it. It was really just for, you know, Aaron and myself. And then I thought, well, OK, maybe this will be a way to keep, you know, our friends and family updated so I won't have to send so many text message about it. And then it just kind of became something else and it really was, to me, like, the best way that I could honor this wonderful love that I found. And I think we all, like - the reasons that you love somebody are so mysterious. Love is the biggest mystery in the world, and yet I've just been spending the past three years trying to articulate why this guy, specifically, was so special and so special to me. You know, after a while, like, this is, like, the chronicle of our love story. It's wonderful. I want it to be out there. There's no reason to keep it to myself.

BLOCK: Nora, I want to ask you about the very end of the obituary that you and your husband wrote together. And it says that Aaron is survived by his parents, his sisters, his first wife, Gwen Stefani, the singer...

PURMORT: (Laughter) Yes. She's been very quiet about the whole thing - very brave.

BLOCK: ...His current wife, Nora and their son, Ralph - and you wrote this - who will grow up to avenge his father's untimely death.

PURMORT: No pressure.

BLOCK: How old is Ralph?

PURMORT: He'll be two in January. So by that we didn't mean, like, he has to grow up and become an oncologist - although, I would be very proud. But just, I mean, life is the best way to avenge it. Like, I was that boy to grow up to be as much of a man as his father was. Aaron was so kind and gentle and he was really, really nice all the time to everyone. And, like, I can see that in our son and he could, too. So...

BLOCK: Well, Nora, again, we are so sorry for your loss. And thank you for taking time to talk to us.

PURMORT: Well, thanks for letting me talk about the best thing in the world.

BLOCK: That's Nora McInerny Purmort. She and her husband Aaron wrote his obituary before he died last week at age 35, revealing his super-secret identity. He was Spiderman. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.