Jason and Kirsten Clawson have found a true fairytale kind of love—twice. After going through the heartbreak, grief, and pain of losing their spouses to cancer, they found each other.
Now, they live in Vineyard, Utah, with Mr. Clawson’s two sons, Boston, 17, and Cooper, 11, and a miracle—their toddler daughter, Macy.
Mr. Clawson, 48, works as a counselor, and Mrs. Clawson, 46, is a human resource director. In an interview with the Epoch Times, they shared their sorrowful yet heartwarming stories of losing their beloved spouses—Valerie and Cody —and then finding each other.
Interestingly, their late spouses were both from Ogden and even their parents had known each other in high school.
“They grew up together. It’s wild,” Mrs. Clawson said.
‘It Dropped a Bomb in Our Lives’
Mr. Clawson’s first wife, Valerie, was the sister of one of Mr. Clawson’s friends. Although it took him a while, Mr. Clawson eventually asked Valerie out.
On the day of the date, however, she said that she had something else to do, so the date was canceled. Valerie felt bad for turning him down and called him later, and they decided to get together for lunch.
“From there, our relationship grew and developed, and we got to know each other well,” Mr. Clawson said.
They got married in 2005 and lived in bliss, building a family with two sons along the way.
In 2018, Valerie had an exploratory surgery because of a large lump in her stomach. It was discovered that she had stage four colon cancer.
“It dropped a bomb in our lives,” Mr. Clawson said. “It’s something that you can’t prepare or get ready for. It forever altered and changed my life and so many others’ lives.”
The next nine months, Mr. Clawson says, were a blur of chemotherapy treatments and getting over the initial shock. Eventually, Mr. Clawson lost his beloved wife.
“It was relatively short and fast, with not a lot of time to prepare or really enjoy or share the memories,” he said.
‘I Knew Immediately It Was Bad’
Mrs. Clawson met her first husband, Cody, through an online dating website when she was moving from Idaho to Utah. She originally wanted to make some connections as she got familiar with her new home.“Cody and I connected, and the day I moved down, he was there waiting for me to drive me into town,” Mrs. Clawson said. “We never separated and got married a few months later.”
Before their marriage, Cody lived in a few other countries and states and felt a pull to live outside of Utah, so Mrs. Clawson happily trekked with him across the country to live in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2020.
“It was April 2nd of 2020,” she said. “We had just bought a house, and everything was shut down. We were isolated and Cody started to complain about not feeling well.”
From there, Mrs. Clawson had a premonition.
“I knew immediately it was bad,” she said. “I couldn’t explain why, but I just knew that it was bad.”
At first, she thought it was COVID-19, and Cody had type-1 diabetes, which made her even more nervous about what could happen. After calling the doctor, they were told to get Cody to the hospital right away. Because of the pandemic, Mrs. Clawson wasn’t even allowed to be with him in the hospital. Three doctors told her that the COVID-19 tests had come back negative, but they still thought it was COVID-19.
Cody started to feel a little better after this, but they still took him to get more blood tests. When they got the results, they found that his white blood cell count was extremely low. They told him he needed to get to the hospital immediately for a blood transfusion. Separated from her husband again, Mrs. Clawson had to nervously await the results of another doctor visit. They then found out he had leukemia.
“We went through the stages of hope,” Mrs. Clawson said. “We [said], ‘It’s leukemia, but some leukemia is very, very treatable, so we’re trying to figure out which one it is.’”
Unfortunately, all the test results were bad news.
“Every single time they came back with something, they came back with the worst-case scenario,” she said.
Mrs. Clawson said this was a really low point for her. She couldn’t be in the hospital with her husband, who had to stay there for treatment, and it was hard to get their families out to visit because of the travel restrictions. Also, Cody was chemo-resistant, and at one point, they were told that he had 12 to 24 hours to live.
From Grief to Gratefulness
Both Mr. and Mrs. Clawson went through the grieving process in different ways, but their grieving process is what eventually led them to each other.For Mr. Clawson, he eventually messaged a group of his closest friends to let them know he needed help getting through the passing of his wife. After having a raw conversation with him about his struggles, they helped him by checking on him as well as assisting him in doing basic household chores.
“It built me up and created a community that allowed me to be empowered to take on hard things,” he said. “It allowed me to start being happier, healthier for my boys, and start being a dad again rather than this sad person who came home miserable.”
After several months of his close friends helping his family rise out of the grief, he told them he could take over again, although they still checked in on him from time to time. During this period, Mr. Clawson was able to begin to look beyond himself. He took a summer off from his work as a counselor and “reinvested” in his son’s lives. They made a bucket list of things they wanted to do as a family.
“We aimed to find happiness, experience something we’ve never done, and honor my wife at the same time,” Mr. Clawson said. “One item on the list was to create a lemonade stand.”
With the money they made, they wanted to make what they called “sunshine baskets” for other people who had experienced loss.
“One day, we set up a lemonade stand outside my house during COVID,” said Mr. Clawson. “It wasn’t easy, but in two hours, we raised $1,500 to start putting forward these sunshine baskets that we would go and deliver to people who were struggling just like us—people with cancer, those who had lost a loved one, or those emotionally struggling.
“So my boys and I would take a basket, we’d show up and bring them these sunshine baskets. We’d hug them; cry with them. ... In those moments we could feel happy before coming back home. It became a way of life for us to help others.”
Once they started delivering these, one of his sons approached him and said, “Dad, why don’t we deliver one of these kits to one person in every state in the United States?”
Initially, Mr. Clawson’s first thought was that he didn’t have enough time to undertake that project.
“But for me as a dad, I saw my son starting to catch the vision of not struggling but getting hope, so I said ‘Let’s do it!’”
With the help of social media, they were able to send their sunshine baskets to someone from every state in America, and they even added some from other countries across the world.
Speaking of the process, Mr. Clawson said, “It has led me down a path of self-discovery, helping me and my kids grow together. I’ve been in front of people I never would have met, done things I never would have done, and challenged myself to become the person I am today.”
Although Mrs. Clawson didn’t receive one of the baskets, seeing them on social media was how she first encountered Mr. Clawson.
After Cody passed away, she moved back to Utah. After a few months, she had a close friend tell her that she should socialize more and get connected with others on a dating app. To get her friend to stop pestering her, Mrs. Clawson got on the app and planned to close it the next day, but one of the first people she saw on the app was Mr. Clawson, whom she recognized from social media.
Finding Love Again
It wasn’t long before Mr. and Mrs. Clawson were talking to each other on the phone daily. In fact, their first conversation was three hours long, and before they even met face to face, they calculated that they had talked on the phone for between 50 and 60 hours.Their conversations didn’t involve trivial things either; they discussed the grief that they had both experienced and how they were coping with the loss of their significant other.
After getting to know each other through conversations on the phone, they decided to meet up. Because of grief and devotion to their loved ones, they both remained inwardly skeptical of where their relationship was headed.
On one of their first dates, however, that changed. While they were sitting on a bench outside a mall, the song “You Say” by Lauren Daigle came on the radio, which was a significant song for both their spouses. They both got emotional and asked each other why.
After discussing their real “emotional connection to that song,” their relationship shifted.
“Sitting on that bench, falling in love, and the song came on, it felt like our spouses were saying, ‘Go do this! Go be happy,’” Mrs. Clawson said.
That was the point at which their relationship really began to blossom, and a concern came up: How were they going to introduce Mrs. Clawson to Mr. Clawson’s sons?
They were both really nervous about how that would turn out, but they needn’t have been.
One day while Mr. Clawson was watching a movie with his sons, they said, “Dad, if she’s your girlfriend, why don’t you just invite her over?”
Eventually, their wedding was a poignant but powerful union of their families.
Mr. Clawson says it certainly isn’t the way either would have planned for their lives to go, but they are both grateful for the blessings they’ve been given, and now, they hope to help others as much as they can.
