Why I lied about being married

When we called my parents to tell them that we were engaged, my father told my mother, "Is she pregnant?" I was 41, so it was a reasonable question. But I wasn't pregnant. I was dying. Troy and I got engaged a month before I was diagnosed terminal. Engaging us wasn't a hasty decision; we had been living together for eight years and seven years. We had talked about getting married for years, but everyone had their own reasons not to. For me, as a…