A Long and Glorious Cackle

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

I am posting this article today — February 4, 2025 — in honor of World Cancer Day. I am inspired by other writers, who share their experiences with surviving cancer or cancer caregiving. These brave souls are listed at the end of the article and I would be grateful if you would consider subscribing to their Substack. In solidarity…

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It was Saturday evening, and I was at my computer, savoring the space to remember, feel, write, and think.

Sometimes, I would let a memory wash over me and try to remember the sounds and smells of the place. Usually, the If I couldn’t remember the scene so vividly, I would try to relive how I felt at that moment.

Saturday mornings were sacred to me for the time that I could devote myself to writing. This was the time in the week when I could wrestle with the grief, anger, and guilt that had built up over my husband’s cancer journey. Sometimes, I needed to drink in my love and gratitude for him, the girls, and life – and splash it all over the page.

If I could write it, then perhaps I could understand how and why I could feel all these things at once.

I sighed and stared at the screen. Why couldn’t I shake the anxiety that his cancer would come roaring back with a vengeance? Either I would stay in therapy for the rest of my life, or I could write it out of me. Writing was less expensive.

Writing is good for you, he would say when I cried that reliving the darkest moments of the journey might not be good for my mental health. But it was healing. Slowly, the glass shards that were stuck in my soul were working their way out.

The image of broken glass triggered something in me, and I started typing. The idea began to take shape, and I focused on the sound and rhythm of the words. Lost in thought, I didn’t hear her approach until she had swiped my cell phone and jumped onto the bed behind me. My writer’s den doubled as a guest bedroom and my daughter’s cell phone had probably locked out after she had used up the daily screen time on her cellphone. In less than 10 seconds, she was wrapped in blankets and transfixed by whatever she had pulled up on my cellphone.

“Put my phone back, and get off my screen,” I said lowering my voice to let her know that I meant business. I would have tried to grab the phone out of her hands, but I needed to finish typing the last sentence that I still had in my head. Somehow, the kids always knew when you had less bandwidth to enforce the rules.

“Mom, I am pretty sure that I can write your book for you,” the voice came from behind me.

“I’m sorry…what?” I uttered and stopped typing. Turning around, I could see her eyes glittering, and a coy, little smile.

“There was a barren tree in a landscape,” she said, breathlessly. “It was all alone.”

It was only last week that she and her sister had discovered my writer’s platform and began reading my posts. They seemed to enjoy reading them and reacted as if the writing about their father’s cancer and my grief was a fictional exercise. They were barely teenagers (14 and 12 years old) and we had done our best to protect them from the emotional rollercoaster of his cancer.

“No wait, I’ve got a better one,” she continued, tension building in her voice. “The storm washed me up onto a beach and I shattered into a million pieces. Never have I felt so lost,” she said with increasing volume and raising a hand to her forehead for added flair.

“It’s so dramatic,” she said returning to her normal voice. “I went through the very SAME thing when Dad got sick – and I didn’t need to write a b-o-o-k.” She shook her head, smiling.

“First – no. I am pretty sure that you did not go through ‘the very same thing’ as I did.” I retorted in amused disbelief.

What a statement! She went through the same thing? I almost laughed out loud. The little monster.

When their Dad was diagnosed, they had been young enough to not understand what cancer really was or why it should matter to them. The school counselor told us to give them simple, basic information and answer their questions, but not burden them with more information than they needed to know.

Dad has cancer, we told them. Cancer is like a weed in the body that can grow out of control. He will need to have treatments to fight the cancer and lose his hair. He won’t feel well and will need us to help him.

At the time, our youngest still believed in Santa Claus. Explaining the complexity of cancer to a child, who could more readily feel the magic of Rudolph than understand how a weed could grow inside someone, would have been futile.

But they were old enough to become absorbed in activities that helped to normalize this time for them. We had them busy with Girl Scouts, volleyball, and swimming. Parents from our friend group picked them up and kept them busy with play dates and sleep overs.

The counselor said that we should check in with the girls every now and ask them if they had questions about Dad’s health or treatments. Was there anything else that they wanted to know about how Dad was doing? Then, we should answer that question honestly, but without the depth and complexity that might be part of an answer to an adult.

“What do we say if they ask us if he will die of the cancer?” I remember asking. If we were to talk about his cancer, we would need to know how to answer this question.

“Tell them that right here, right now, Dad is OK.”

Right here, right now, I repeated silently.

More information than this would be too much for our young girls. What they understood was the present, and there was nothing they could do about their Dad’s health other than worry. Goodness knows, I didn’t want them to become like me.

Behind me, I heard a soft chuckling and turned my attention back to my daughter. While I was daydreaming, she had succeeded in spending a glorious minute with my cell phone.

“Secondly,” I continued after almost losing my train of thought, “you have ten seconds to give me my phone back. I know that this is part of a big distraction to keep my phone as long as possible.”

This wasn’t my first rodeo with the screenagers.

“I was washed up on a beach – cold, and helpless,” she said, stifling a laugh for a few seconds until it devolved into a long and glorious cackle.

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Other Writers in the Cancer and Caregiving Space

Victoria, the Carer Mentor. You can learn about her journey here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why? Victoria is inspirational and posted an Anthology of Cancer Experiences this week to highlight the important role of everyone in this journey. She also compiled a recommendation list of organizations and books on the cancer journey. She highlighted the writers below in greater detail in her anthology this week. I repost a mention of them here.

Emma Vivian writes Am I Cured Yet? by Emma Vivian. She writes about surviving the experience of breast cancer beyond that of her friend.

Jeannie Moloo writes A Full Plate with Jeannie Moloo about gaps in cancer care, her late husband’s experience of nonHodgkin’s lymphoma, and her own experience of Breast cancer.

Mel Erwin writes My Lovely Lungs about living with stage 4 lung cancer.

Jennifer Garam writes Rebuilding With Jennifer Garam about her recovery from ovarian cancer.

Janine Cutting writes the New Found Life by Janine Cutting about life beyond her colorectal cancer.

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