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When Laura Parness' breast cancer returned as an advanced form of the disease in 2002, after 15 years in remission, she and her husband, Bill, decided to spend her remaining days traveling the world.

"She always felt great when she got away," Bill Parness, a Jewish resident of Aberdeen, said of his wife. "She felt like she was in another world."

Though Laura died in November 2008 at the age of 54, Parness said that their last five-and-a-half-years together were among the best of a four-decade relationship that stretched back to the Catskills' summer camp where they first met as teenagers.

During those nearly six years, in which she battled with stage 4 breast cancer, the Parnesses went on a total of 12 cruises, mainly in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, and also traveled throughout the United States, Spain, and the French Polynesian islands.

"We knew it was not curable, but we decided to live our lives," Parness said.

Inspired by the strength that Laura drew from those trips, Parness decided to found an organization in 2009, fittingly called Laura's Journeys, that funds vacations for terminally ill patients who are being treated at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and other institutions within the Continuum Health Partners network.

This January, the organization funded its first trip, a weeklong cruise to the western Caribbean, for a 39-year-old cancer patient from Queens.

While the organization's long-term goal is to fund as many trips as possible, "first and foremost, we want to educate people about the therapeutic value of travel, not just for cancer patients but anyone who is dealing with a serious chronic disease," Parness said.

The idea to start this organization came one week after Laura died when Parness reflected on the eulogy he gave at her funeral, during which he spoke about their trips together.

"Until the last several months, these were truly a great six years," Parness said at her funeral. "We lived out the dreams of empty-nesters and cruised or traveled to places like Spain, the Mediterranean, Hawaii, California, Mexico, the Caribbean and, in the ultimate 33rd anniversary trip, to Tahiti and French Polynesia. All the while, we also basked in the accomplishments and happiness of our sons."

That is when, Parness said, it occurred to him to start an organization that would help give other patients and their partners the same opportunities he enjoyed.

The couple's initial embrace of travel after Laura's cancer returned was not an obvious decision, he explained.

After her disease resurfaced, they asked her doctor if they would still be able to go on the trip that they had already planned.

"We said to him, 'look we have a trip planned for December, can we do it?' And he said absolutely," Parness recalled.

With this endorsement, he said, "we made the decision that we would travel as much as possible."

Even when she began her chemotherapy treatment in 2005, she fought the fatigue and they decided to continue with their trips.

"That in no way prevented us from traveling," he said of the chemotherapy.

They were able to take these trips since Parness, the owner of a public relations firm in Aberdeen, was self-employed and their two sons were grown and had already moved out of the house.

Though they occasionally vacationed with their children or friends, most of the trips were just the two of them.

"There were times we felt like we were on a second honeymoon," he said.

In the end, the traveling not only helped them both cope emotionally with Laura's sickness, it also brought out her resolve and passion for life, Parness said.

"She was the kind of person that people would look at her at the time and people would say, 'I can't believe she's sick,'" he said. "She wanted to live a 'normal' life. She was so remarkable. I don't know if I could do what she did."