This Body is Bullshit

This weekend, my husband lost a friend.

A good man. Kind, private, strong. He fought cancer quietly — didn’t let many people in on how bad it had gotten until about a year ago. He lived across the country, which made it hard for his friends to show up the way they wanted to. They tried. But he kept most of it to himself anyway. That was his way.

He lost his wife to leukemia over a decade ago. And now their daughter — barely in her twenties — has lost both of her parents to cancer.

I keep coming back to that. A young woman, just starting her life, and both of her parents are gone. To the same disease. That’s the kind of grief that doesn’t have a roadmap. I don’t know how you carry that. I just hope she has people around her who show up and stay.

This group of guys — Matt and his closest friends — are all just past fifty now. This loss has shaken them in that particular way that starts happening at this age, when you realize health isn’t guaranteed and the people you love aren’t either. They’re barely through grieving one friend before another wave hits. One of their closest friends’ wives is in hospice right now. Also cancer. There’s no space between the losses anymore — just one rolling into the next.

And then today someone came by work. A guy I’ve gotten to know, someone I genuinely like, who’s been out on leave. He didn’t come for business. He came to say goodbye. He’s tired. He’s choosing hospice. He wanted to see everyone one last time while he still could.

It’s a lot. It’s just a lot.

But — and I always seem to find one — there are silver linings this week and I’m holding onto them hard.

My friend, my sweet spirit animal moon phase goddess, who was told she had a tumor in her ear — it’s Ménière’s disease. Which comes with vertigo and hearing loss and its own set of challenges, but it is not brain damage and it is not paralysis of half her face, which is what we were bracing for. That’s a win. A real one. Now I just need to keep her out of the sun so she stops getting carved up for skin cancer, because I fully intend to grow old and ridiculous with her.

And my stepsister’s sister-in-law — the one doing clinical trials for a rare and terrifying cancer — got some promising news. Her treatment seems to be working. That matters. That gives a lot of us a little air to breathe.

I don’t have anything profound to say about any of this. No clean takeaway. No lesson I’ve neatly extracted.

Just the overwhelming urge to hug my people and not let go.

Cancer fucking sucks. I hate it.