Göran Martinson survived almost 13 years after he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. It was not cancer but COVID-19 that ultimately killed him at age 55. “He had so many other things that almost got him,” said his wife, Ingela Martinson. A year after her husband’s death, grief still wallops the 51-year-old Vancouver resident at unexpected moments, not to mention the expected ones, like birthdays, holidays and anniversaries. Ingela can count on one place to bring her solace, however. Each Thursday and Friday she drives to Lake Oswego, Ore., to volunteer at The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints temple.

“When I go there, I feel closer to my husband, closer to my Savior,” she said. “I mean that in a spiritual sense. I have felt my husband’s presence many times, on the other side of the veil. I know there is a life after this one.” She and Göran married in the temple in August 1990, just a year after it opened. In their faith, that ceremony sealed them to one another for eternity. “I feel I will join him,” she said. “That’s what makes it so hard to be here.” As Ingela and her family gather for Easter today against the backdrop of the waning COVID-19 pandemic, they and thousands of others in Clark County will reconcile their own loss with the Christian holiday’s promise of redemption.

Finding love in Sweden Ingela wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after graduating from Fort Vancouver High School in 1989. Her parents, Vicki and Craig Hogman, asked if there was a country in the world she wanted to visit. Given that her name is Swedish, and her father had served as a Latter-day Saints missionary in Stockholm, Ingela decided on Sweden. Her parents bought her a one-way ticket, and off she went. She met Göran at church there in October 1989, not long after she arrived in the country. “He was one of the few people who would speak English to me,” she said.

He asked her to marry him on New Year’s Eve that year. For the next decade, they continued to live in Göteborg, Sweden, where they had the first three of their four sons — Kristoffer, Andreas and Nicklas. Their youngest son, Nathan, was born after they moved back to the United States. They established their lives in Vancouver, attending church at the Creekside Ward (or congregation). The family was also heavily involved in Scouts. Ingela received the Silver Beaver Award in 2017. She credits her husband with helping all four of their sons earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Göran made a good living, working his way up to the position of sales team lead at Open Sesame, which provides online learning programs. Ingela said he encouraged her pursuit of leadership roles at church and in Scouts, as well as her photography business. “He always supported me in being a homemaker and never made me feel any less than him due to my role in our family,” Ingela said.

Then in 2009, a mishap on a skiing trip landed Göran in a hospital emergency room. Doctors were concerned about the results of his blood tests. Göran was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, which causes scarring of bone marrow, hampering its ability to produce blood cells. He learned he would become sicker and sicker, prone to episodes of bleeding, and eventually need a bone-marrow transplant. “It was a series of traumatic, shocking experiences. Blood cancer is pretty nasty,” Ingela said. “He didn’t want people to treat him differently. People thought he was in remission.” In 2018, doctors determined it was time for the marrow transplant, which meant doubling down on precautions to keep Göran healthy enough to endure the procedure. “We started using COVID regulations before COVID. We wore masks to the grocery store. We were super careful. We stopped doing a lot of things,” Ingela said.

The Martinsons knew the transplant wouldn’t be a cure, just a way to extend Göran’s life. But Göran’s body rejected the marrow, making him sicker. “The kind of caregiving at the end,” she said trailing off before describing medical tasks she had to learn to do, like inserting IVs. “One day he decided to go against doctor’s orders and mow the lawn. He fell and gashed his knees,” she said. “He wanted to live. He said, ‘I didn’t have this transplant to survive. I had it to live.’ ” Venturing out After all the years Göran spent in and out of the hospital, Ingela became accustomed to anticipating the worst. As soon as coronavirus started to spread throughout the United States in early 2020, a troubling premonition took root in her mind.

“I just knew he would die of COVID,” she said. The family almost escaped the virus. As the pandemic seemed to ebb, the Martinsons ventured out to make the most of Göran’s last days. “I believe people just know when their time is up. He started doing things to prepare, to say goodbye,” she said. The family went camping at Oregon’s Crater Lake in August 2021, posing for a photo against the backdrop of Smith Rock along the way. Then in December, the family went to see “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in the theater. The whole family caught COVID-19. On Dec. 31, 2021, Ingela posted a photo on Instagram of Göran in a hospital bed at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. He wore a wan smile and an oxygen tube under his nose.

“We won the COVID lottery and got sick on Christmas Eve,” Ingela wrote. “Most of us are starting to finally go in the right direction in our healing, but due to Göran’s circumstances, it has not been that simple for him. … He’s not doing real well at the moment, but we are praying that things will turn the right direction soon so he can come back home to us.” That wasn’t to be. Ingela couldn’t visit him until she had shaken coronavirus herself. By that time, his condition had worsened. He was on a ventilator in an induced coma, unable to communicate with her. “I held his hand and said, ‘We fought a really good fight. Nurses say you are in pain. I don’t want this for you anymore. If you’re done, you should go. You need to give me a sign that you’re done,’ ” she said. “I played ‘Peace in Christ’ for him. When I left, he was stable. A few hours after I left, they called and said he was actively dying. It was quite an event to get my kids to go in there.” Ingela said the social worker who had helped their family throughout Göran’s illness persuaded hospital administrators to let the family into his room to say goodbye.

Moving through grief Things Ingela used to enjoy, like music, only brought pain after Göran died on Jan. 17, 2022. When she and her husband’s song, “Oceans Apart” by Richard Marx, streamed through the stereo months after his death, she nearly tripped rushing to turn it off. She took down most photos of her husband. “It hurt too much every time I walked past,” she said. “I don’t need stuff on my walls to remind myself of the beautiful life we had.” Just being in the house she and her husband shared for 20 years has been difficult. She wanted to move, but the tight housing market foiled that plan. So she cashed out Göran’s retirement savings to pay off the house in Vancouver’s Burton area. Thanks to a GoFundMe page, she was able to cover funeral expenses and lingering medical bills.

Her youngest son still lives with her, and her oldest moved back in. “It’s a blessing,” she said. Ingela said she appreciates the help because she has encountered health problems of her own, leading her to quit her job as an office manager. After all those years of caregiving for Göran and handling his medical emergencies, she developed post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia, which causes body pain and fatigue. “I spend a lot of time trying to find things to be grateful for,” Ingela said. “I read a lot of Scripture. Sometimes I was really angry and I still prayed. … I don’t think spirituality is always ‘everything is peachy.’” She and her kids are healing to the point that they can revisit Göran’s catchphrases. “My husband always said, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ Now that he’s dead, we say that all the time. Our family always chuckles,” Ingela said.

Today after church, Ingela and her extended family — 28 people — will gather for a potluck and Easter egg hunt. They will feel Göran’s absence. “I know through my faith that he’s in a better place. He doesn’t have to be in pain,” Ingela said. “He died so we both could live.”