As most stories usually begin, the day of Jonathan’s cancer diagnosis was just a regular day. The day before I had started my rotation back into the office, which meant according to the schedule, this bright Tuesday morning was spent working from home. Cases were starting to decrease in NYC very slowly so I was getting back to my routine and I was miserable with my allergies. It felt like life was maybe going to come around back to normal. I don’t remember being too concerned with Jonathan’s appointment that he had gone to earlier in the day. I assumed they would tell him it was a minor issue, something that needed exercise or some sort of dietary change. My boss had asked me earlier to see if he could pick up some items I had at my house. He just finished calling me to say he was about 10 minutes away and as I hung up, Jonathan came walking through the door. After sniffling and complaining about how I was debating whether my allergies were actually Covid symptoms, I finally stopped for a second and asked how his appointment went. He didn’t say anything but placed a small package in my hand. “A gift for you.” he said sweetly “for my wonderful, loving, beautiful, special, perfect, amazing magical wife.” This made me suspicious. While Jonathan is always one to sprinkle compliments into a conversation, after 5 years of marriage I knew that there’s usually baggage when they’re excessively layered up on top of each other. I opened the package skeptically. To my delight, there was an avocado shaped coin purse inside. “It’s an avocado! Thanks!” I said calling back to a vine we quoted constantly to each other constantly. We spoke briefly about it and as I was taking a photo of it to send to my best friend, I offhandedly asked again how the appointment went.
“Well, uh” Jonathan began and then stopped to clear his throat. Suddenly, I was aware of how quiet it was in our apartment. The windows were closed to keep myself from sneezing and the TV was on mute The look on his face, his aversion to make eye contact and the pause as he tried to put the words together made it feel like the air was sucked out of the room. I waited for the next words fearful of their severity. He gave a half hearted laugh and blurted out “They said I had cancer.”
Silence
He forced a laugh again and I looked at him for clarification. Was he joking? Jonathan has complained of growing ailments for a number of years. His knees ached with excessive use, his back hurt constantly, sometimes he’d complain about his shoulders or toes. When I urged him to get it checked out he always dismissed me. “It’s probably shoulder cancer” he had previously said “I don’t want to pay the doctor to tell me that.” The argument over going to the doctor had gotten so extreme over the last 5 years, that in December of 2019 I went behind his back and signed him up for my health insurance. He didn’t want the extra cost but I wanted him to be safe. In January of 2020, after years of not having it, Jonathan finally had health insurance. In April of 2020, just a month before the diagnosis and while the world as we knew it crumbled, Jonathan asked to be taken off of it. He argued that he was fine and it would save us money. I grew so angry that he would even consider that option during a global health crisis. “I don’t care if it saves us money.” I snapped at him “If you get Covid, and have to be hospitalized I would like you to have insurance.” He insisted I take him off and that he didn’t need it. I ignored him and continued to pay for it myself.
When he didn’t say anything I grew impatient. I knew his joke pattern. Say the line three times and when I finally roll my eyes and start ignoring him, he folds and tells me the truth. “Stop, that's not funny. What did they actually say?” I asked. He said it again “They said I have cancer”
We repeated this a few times. His tone was throwing me off. It was different from all the times he had done this in the past and I was beginning to get angry. I couldn’t tell if this was real or if he had just gotten really good at trying to freak me out. If this was a joke, I was going to kill him with my bare hands. I couldn’t even get out my anger because I felt my tears forcing their way out. “No they didn’t. What did they actually say” I pleaded. I was starting to get scared and hoped the tone of my voice would convey my need for this joke to end. “Ok, I’m just kidding” he responded back while laughing, and I felt victorious. I knew he wasn’t being serious, I just had to let him know it was upsetting me. “Fuck. Ok so what did they actually say” I laughed while cleaning my nose with a tissue and wiping my tears away. “They said I had cancer. This is real. I’m not joking.” he said. We made eye contact and had one last brief moment of silence together, then I broke.
This is where my memory stops. I remember the before and the aftermath so clearly but I don’t remember what Jonathan told me in those five minutes. Something about the tests they ran, the call he got confirming it was cancer and the vague steps the doctors explained would happen next. I don’t remember those words. I just remember the tears and the deep sobs that needed to escape from my chest but were only released through short shallow breaths. I remember asking “are they sure?” as if this was just some simple clerical error that needed to be fixed. I remember the shakiness of Jonathan’s voice as he explained everything, and I remember both of us collapsing into each other as we hugged. My brain just shut down for those five minutes. Nothing was fully processed or retained. The white noise that I had grown accustomed to was gone. It felt like a train had hit me and all I could hear was metal screeching along. With my entire being in pain, my phone buzzed with a text. My boss was outside and waiting for me.
Jonathan got the items together for me to bring out and I tried to piece myself together to look as normal as possible. My eyes, already swollen from allergies, felt like huge rocks in my skull. I took some deep breaths to try my best to keep from hyperventilating. I was dizzy and felt like I was going to throw up at any moment. Items in hand, I put my mask on to go meet my boss outside. One distinct moment that is burned into my senses is the feeling of trying to steady my breath as I went out. The sharp breaths I took sucked the fabric mask straight into my mouth and nostrils. As I walked out of the building, I felt as if someone was trying to suffocate me and the feeling made me panic. I paused in our courtyard for a brief moment, and ripped the mask off while gagging. I stood in place, pleading with myself not to throw up. By some miracle I didn’t, and gathered myself enough to continue forward. After the quick niceties and the items handed over, my boss took a good look at me and asked “Are you ok?” I fell apart all over again. Through my shallow breaths I was able to get out “They said he has cancer” and the sparse other details that I knew. This was the first person I was telling and I still didn’t fully believe it. In my mind, Jonathan was going to jump out from somewhere and yell “HAHA PRANKED!” My head hurt so much and the dizziness was still present. My flimsy mask was getting sucked into my mouth as I spoke and I had to take it off again. I don’t even remember what was said on my end or his end. The only thing I remember is him asking if he could hug me. I said yes and let him wrap his arms around me while I cried. That hug was worth breaking the Covid protocols. I can’t even explain how badly I needed it.
After I calmed down a bit and my boss left, I made my way back into the courtyard of my building. I knew I should go inside but I couldn’t yet. I wasn’t confident in my ability to hold myself together enough to face Jonathan. Instead, I sat on a bench with my mask off and felt the sun’s warmth on my skin. I intended to have time to work through the information that I didn’t fully understand, but I couldn’t do it. The anxiety, fear and overwhelming nausea were too intense for me. I didn’t know what to do mentally or physically. So I began to write things down in my notes on my phone. I wrote about what was said and what was happening, in case I couldn’t bring myself to say it outloud another time. I worked myself up again, and I decided it was time to call my mother. I cried to her, expressed my fear and she did what my mother has done in all of my times of need. She told me how much she loved me. She gave me the words of wisdom that I still hold dear and most of all, she assured me that we would get through this, and her and my family would be with us every step of the way. After our short, meaningful call and a few panicked text messages sent out to my sister, I gathered myself and made my way inside.
After finally getting all the details of what was going on there was only one thing to do: Figure out how to tell the rest of our friends and family what was going on.Jonathan had already taken care of telling his mother but no one else knew. It was draining to go through the sparse details to tell my boss and my mother what was happening, and just thinking about doing it multiple times with multiple people left a knot in my throat. While we sat around, drenched in our fear, our friends texted us about things we were talking about earlier. How were we supposed to tell them that in a matter of hours our lives were changed? I started with my best friend. I told her I couldn’t talk, was ok at the moment, and then I told her the news. She was shocked and asked me questions. I answered as best I could and she told me she loved me. It was the first person I told and I was dreading having to do it again. Before I even had a chance to express that feeling, Jonathan told me he took care of it. When I inquired what he meant he gestured towards his laptop which had facebook open. There, in big letters, said one simple sentence:
I had to laugh. The absurdity of revealing this massive, scary news with a facebook status brought up a belly laugh I couldn’t control. That is my husband in his true form. While I worried myself over telling our loved ones, his “don’t sweat the big things, just get through it” attitude was laced into the words. I have always envied his ability to take things in stride while I always tiptoe around the edge of completely losing it. I relinquished my control of this situation and just let it play out. I couldn’t talk to more people yet and if this is how he wanted it to be handled, so be it. As we let the status settle, we decided to personally tell our bushwick family. While debating how to bring it up, Jonathan pulled the trigger and wrote
Hoping to spare them the torment of trying to figure out if Jonathan was joking or not, I added that this was real and what the diagnosis was. As expected, we were met with love and support and we needed it. Our close friends coming together to hold our hand through what was gearing up to be one of the scariest times of our lives mean the world to us. You often take for granted the phrase “If you need anything just let me know.” sometimes it’s said after a bad day, when there really isn’t anything to do about it. Sometimes you hear it after heartbreak, or while recovering from a bad hangover. Hearing it genuinely from our friends really gave us a sense of security when we felt so unbalanced. That small wave of love became a tsunami when people started to pick up on Jonathan’s facebook status. So many people, some of whom we hadn’t spoken to in months or longer, reached out to give us words of comfort. In our darkest moments, one by one our friends held up a candle to help us see. Before the day was done, we had enough light to help find our path.
I know I’ve said this in different ways on different social media outlets but I will never be able to say it enough. To all of you who stood by us, checked in on us, cooked meals for us, sent sweet gifts to us, who just said I love you in our time of need: Thank you. Thank you from my entire heart. You all showed up for us in ways I didn’t think were possible. We love you so, so much. Thank you.
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