Don't Be Sad, He Said

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

My cheeks were wet with tears as I made my way down the stairs. I found him sitting at the computer of the basement home office. It had become a makeshift man cave where he retreated to find peace and quiet.

When he heard me come in, he turned away from his computer. Seeing my tears, he opened his arms without a word. I hugged him tightly wanting to cement the memory of his touch and smell into my brain.

“Sometimes I don’t think that it is good that I am writing this book,” I said in fits and spurts between sobs. The dark thoughts about his survival had come back and the terrible loss it would be for me and the girls when he was gone.

“No. The book helps you. For you, the highs are high, and the lows are low. I love you just the way you are,” he said, holding me tightly. Then, suddenly, he pulled away a little and had a serious look on his face.

“If and when I die from this cancer, I don’t want you and the girls to be sad for very long. There are too many good things in this world, especially in this day and age,” my husband said in a serious voice. His look was so genuine and full of care that I could hardly return his gaze.

My tears burst into a river. I hadn’t expected him to say something like this. Despite nearly three years of thinking about his grim odds of survival from the cancer, I was completely unprepared for him to tell me about his wishes for when he was gone. This felt too close to my worst nightmare.

“Please don’t tell me not to be sad when you die,” I said with my mouth partially pressed against his chest. “You mean the world to me and the girls. The space you occupy in our lives is irreplaceable.”

He was more than irreplaceable to us, I thought. He was essential to the well-being of our entire family. It was ridiculous to think that we wouldn’t be sad for very long. Of all people, he should have understood this.

His father died from leukemia when he was only five years old. The cause was thought to be radiation exposure at the nuclear power plant where he worked. In those days, the dangers of nuclear radiation were not as well appreciated. His father was diagnosed with leukemia at age 30 and died within a few months. A bone marrow transplant would have saved him, but this wasn’t invented until shortly after he died.

The premature death of his father had a big impact on his life. If his father had been alive, he could have been another source of wisdom and support for him during tough times in his life. I know that his father would have been so proud of the man that he became and how he has loved and cared for his family.

The sobs were building up in my chest and my face was burning. I broke away from his embrace to run to the bathroom. I wanted to splash cold water on my face and regain my composure. He wasn’t bothered by me crying, but I wanted to prevent a full-blown cryfest for my own sake. I needed to short circuit the continuous loop of pain that my mind was inventing.

As soon as I reached the bathroom, I looked in the mirror. Red puffy eyes, red nose, and red cheeks. I looked like a clown. I found a washcloth next to the sink and used it to soak my face in cold water for several minutes. Slowly, my tears stopped, and my face felt less hot.

From the other room, I began to hear chuckling. And then a big, raucous belly laugh. What?

I left the bathroom with my face still wet and red to find him watching a video on his computer. Something from the video struck him as funny and he was still smiling and cackling away when I reached him.

“What on Earth?” I asked.

“This is the strongest man in the world, and he works out with his 10-year-old son in the gym every day,” he chuckled. “They just asked the cameraman to try to lift the weights that his son is lifting, and he couldn’t,” he said.

A tall, thin man was lying on a weight bench and struggling to lift 40-pound free weight dumbbells in each hand. The goal was to perform a chest press, but he was struggling and sputtering to the great amusement of the enormous father and son standing on the sidelines.

My husband’s face was full of laughter, and he had tears in his eyes of pure joy. His chuckles kept bubbling up and causing his whole body to shake while I watched in amazement.

Not two minutes after he told me not to be sad if he died, he was cracking himself up. I couldn’t believe it. Wait…I could believe it.

He must have put our conversation into a box almost the moment that I ran to the bathroom. How could he set a conversation like this aside, while I would perseverate on it for the rest of the day? Whatever this ability was, he deserved a gold medal for it. In this regard, I wanted to be like him so, so much.

He turned toward me, and his smile faded for a moment. “It is always harder for the person left behind than the person going through the treatment,” he said, putting his arm around me. Our eyes met and I could feel his love and sympathy.

I refused to believe this. What he had gone through during his year of treatment was enormous. He had to grapple with the shock of a shortened life expectancy and what he might leave behind, never-ending medical procedures, constant pain from his port-a-cath, debilitating nausea with the chemotherapy treatments, and fatigue. I had also gone through hell, but a different type of hell entirely.

I had made this harder on myself than it had to be. That much was clear. My desire to understand the severity of his disease from a medical standpoint was not helpful. My longing to know his chances of fighting this disease also brought me pain. My drive to analyze everything and have real answers that moved the needle forward from Point A to Point B was positively pain-inducing.

There was no Point A or B, I had come to realize. There was nothing to “solve”. The less one tried to think, the better. Let it go. Breathe. Find joy. The best path forward was surprisingly simple.

“Check out how much the son can lift,” he said as the video began showing the 10-year old’s daily lifting routine. His eyes were glued to the video again. A smile came back to his face, and he shot me a glance. It was entertaining alright. I’ll give him that. Yes, it was even downright amusing.

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