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Man Finds Photo of Late-Wife in Wedding Dress He Never Got to See Her Wear

John Polo married the love of his life immediately after she was diagnosed with cancer, never getting to see her in her dream wedding dress - until after she had already passed away.

Polo, who grew up in Elmwood Park, had married his one-time high school sweetheart inside a courthouse just before her very first surgery following her cancer diagnosis.

“We rushed there. To become man and wife,” Polo wrote on Facebook. “Not knowing if she would make it out of surgery alive.”

Michelle Marie Polo survived the surgery, but doctors later said she wouldn’t survive the rare disease that would ultimately consume her -- a terminal diagnosis Polo said prompted the couple to begin planning their “real wedding" in Chicago.

But two weeks before Michelle was set to walk down the aisle, two weeks before the couple would say their “I dos” once more, she passed away.

“I have so many regrets,” Polo wrote on a Facebook page for his blog Better Not Bitter Widower. “Not getting to see her walk down the aisle is atop that list.”

Michelle died in January 2016, after two and a half years of fighting. But not before she managed to find her dream wedding dress.

“She loved that dress SO much,” Polo wrote. “While at hospice, she would talk to people about how great the wedding was going to be. She wasn't coherent enough to realize that she wasn't going to make it to there.”

Polo never got to see Michelle in that dress, but he recently revealed that he made a heartbreaking discovery just one week after her death. 

“A week after she passed away I stumbled across this picture in her phone,” he wrote. “I lay motionless in bed, both happy and devastated. Tears flowing down my cheeks as I laughed aloud at the memory of how giddy it made her. My bride. In her dress.”

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John Polo

Polo found a photo of his late-wife wearing her beautiful beaded white wedding dress.

Last week, Polo shared that photo and the story behind it for the first time on his Facebook page. 

"I saved that picture because I just felt like I would know when the time was right [to share it]," he told NBC 5. "It just hit me last Thursday." 

Polo said he hopes to eventually frame the photo and hang it in his living room. 

"I don’t think I could handle putting it in the bedroom," he said. 

But he's not quite ready for that to happen yet.

"I think it’s going to be like when I posted it," he said. "When I feel like the time is right."

Polo, who is also releasing a book this month about dealing with grief, added that he's happy the photo has garnered attention on social media, saying his wife wanted him to share their story. He noted the dress is being saved for his stepdaughter. 

“I want to live a long life. I want to remarry and have grandkids. I want to write and teach. I want to spread my message to the world. I want to tell them everything I have learned about love, loss, grief and healing,” he wrote. “But. When it is my time, I am running up there. No - I am sprinting up there! To see her. #in #that #dress.”

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