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Cassie is the driver in our family. Everybody knows this. And it’s not just because she really likes to drive — which she does — it’s also because Dan is a lousy driver. Everybody knows that too. It’s not all his fault though as he comes by it naturally. Both of Dan’s parents made driving an adventure and neither of his brothers is an automotive rock star. So Cassie has always been the primary driver in the relationship.

This is significant because we decided to spend ten weeks in Northern California again this spring and we have historically driven out so that Doc the Basset Hound can join us and so we can have our car while we are there. This year, however, we decided it didn’t make sense for Cassie to do the drive given her varying energy levels. So Dan drove out with one of our close friends who graciously volunteered to make the trip. More accurately, our friend drove and Dan handled podcasts, snacks, and restaurant selections.  

It was a great road trip for them covering four nights and five days. The weather was perfect. The scenery beautiful. The podcasts funny. (Who knew true crime could be funny?) Yet it also represented the longest we have been apart since we learned that Cassie has metastatic breast cancer. Even though it was only four nights, we missed each other. We were both lonely and a little out of sorts. Dan was worried about Cassie. Cassie found it strange being in the house  without Dan or Doc. Dan didn’t sleep well because he kept rolling over, seeing an empty bed, and contemplating his future. 

It got us both thinking. How do we decide whether or not to spend time apart? We’ve both always been fiercely independent. Before the diagnosis we both traveled a lot for work, took  trips on our own and spent weekends away with friends. Sometimes we’d even make plans without consulting each other because it felt like we had all of the time in the world and both wanted the other to have fun. Now it all seems different. Every night away from each other feels like a lost night. Yet we still have things we want to do on our own and people we want to spend time with individually. So how do we decide? 

Sometimes it’s clear as it was with the California trip — the ends (ten weeks in California together and quality road-trip time with a close friend) clearly justified the means (five days apart). In other circumstances though, we’ve found we need to intentionally consider a set of questions before making plans. Will the time away from each other be restorative and energizing? How is Cassie feeling? How connected are we as a couple at that moment?  When were we last apart? How many nights are we talking about? 

There’s no clear formula but we’re realizing that time together is more precious than ever and sleeping next to each other can no longer be taken for granted. 

Big spiders. Horror movies. What other people think. War. Trump. Identity theft. Home invasion. Failure. Clowns. Russian nesting dolls. 

Everybody has things they’re afraid of.  

Since Cassie’s diagnosis, we’ve picked a word or a theme for our year. Last year it was “A Year of Wow and Wonder.” This year we’re considering Fearless or Fear Less.

Fear can get in the way of living life. And, when one has limited time you don’t want any more obstacles.  Yet we can all think of instances when fear prevented us from experiencing something that could have been amazing and we wind up missing things because we couldn’t overcome our insecurities or anxiety.

Facing a terminal illness can be very scary. Fear of pain. Of side effects from medications. Bad scan results. Good scan results because then you know the bad results are just around the corner. Fear of not being able to do the things you want because of your illness. Fear of dying. Fear of being the one left behind. 

While it might be unrealistic to put aside all of these fears, as a couple we can agree to try and “fear less” together. We won’t let fear take over our days or drive our decision making. We will jump into this life with cancer with both feet. To live our lives to the fullest and not wait to have experiences or embark on adventures because of fear. Even fearing less won’t be that easy. We used to look at each other when we were scared and say “everything is going to be OK.” Now, that formerly comforting phrase rings hollow but we can still try to be less scared, less owned by fear, today. 

Living without fear may be impossible but fearing even a little bit less feels more doable.  So that’s our plan. What’s yours?

We’ve never been huge Valentine’s Day people. We don’t hate it or anything and we don’t disdainfully dismiss it as a “Hallmark” holiday but it’s never really been our thing. We don’t exchange gifts or go out. We’ve traditionally given each other a couple of cards and called it a day. 

Then last year, following Cassie’s diagnosis, we found ourselves wanting to have a small Valentine’s Day dinner party for the first time ever. We had some friends over.  Dan cooked a delicious meal (actually he recreated the first meal he ever made for Cassie which turned out to have been on Valentine’s Day 1992 so maybe we are more VD people than we thought). We shared stories of how we met.  It was great.

This year we are doing the same thing and we’ve added a robust Valentine’s Day playlist and an eagerly anticipated — by us anyway —  game of “lovers bingo” (get your minds out of the gutter its pretty clean). The bubbly is on ice, Cassie is decorating the table, Dan has on special heart socks and the cooking (once again of the “first meal”) will commence shortly.

So what changed? Why is Valentine’s Day now something that feels more worthy of marking? It’s probably because we’ve learned you can’t take anything for granted including or maybe especially love. We constantly say to each other that we feel so lucky to have such a strong foundation. To still be so much in love. To have our feelings for each other sustain us in the midst of unrelenting sadness and grief. Not all couples going through a terminal cancer diagnosis have that going for them and many unfortunately end in divorce. Others die so quickly they don’t make it to the next Valentine’s Day. Before, on February 14, we used to blithely say that everyday should be a “day of love” but now leaning into Valentine’s Day and celebrating our twenty eight year love affair feels really important. And doing it with some of the friends who have helped support us and our relationship just seems right. 

Tell someone you love them. Don’t wait. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Dan comes from a family of big nappers. Cassie didn’t grow up that way. This has been one of those areas that we have had to reconcile over the course of our marriage. It’s been hilarious. There was that time Dan’s whole family was napping in Chicago and Cassie answered a knock on the front door only to be confronted by a total stranger dressed all in leather with a huge St. Bernard. (Everything worked out because “it was just Cousin Bernie.”) Or Dan trying to give Cassie napping lessons to limited success. (“Lie still. Close your eyes.”) We rest and recharge differently. And we’d grown OK with that over the years up to the time of Cassie’s diagnosis.

Then the recent holiday season got us both re-thinking the whole concept of rest. During all of the holiday craziness Cassie was constantly balancing her desire to participate in every activity, every party, every outing — every one of those fun opportunities that are presented that time of year —  with the voice in her head that asks “will a late dinner on a week-night be too much?” “ Will a particular activity today cause her to miss other fun things later in the week?” It’s really hard.

Dan, not surprisingly, often suggests that Cassie “take a nap” or cancel an activity. Cassie usually opts to push through. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she says.  But, there has to be a balance. 

What we’re learning is that resting one day doesn’t necessarily equate to energy the next. But having a number of really full days strung together is not just exhausting but makes Cassie feel even worse than usual. And, that living in the middle – neither fully doing or totally resting – is unfulfilling. So, Cassie must follow her gut and do what feels right. Sometimes pushing through for a number of fun activities is totally worth it! Sometimes the voice in her head will say: “This is too much” and we need to listen to that and be aware of the consequences if we choose differently. It’s a constant balancing act but we’ve come to appreciate two things: 1) That relying on Cassie’s intuition usually gets us to the right place and 2) That those napping lessons are finally paying dividends.

Like many, we have a long and complicated relationship with new year’s resolutions. For years we made and promptly ignored them. Then we simply ignored making them. There was a good multi-year streak when Cassie’s annual resolution was to “drink more sparkling wine” and Dan was all too happy to tag along with that one. Finally, because he is prone to over complicating things, Dan developed a tradition of starting to think about a resolution on New Year’s Eve and then adopting it by the end of the first quarter and letting it run for the next year. That approach actually seemed to work for a while as Dan focused on things like being less judgmental, more grateful, choosing without regret, etc. 

Last year following Cassie’s diagnosis, we simply let NYE pass without giving thought to resolutions. We were just trying to hang on. During this past year though we have learned that our life now requires a much higher level of intentionality. That can look different for each of us. Dan tries to set a daily aspiration. Cassie focuses on intentionally slowing down. We are checking in with each other more often and adjusting our schedules and plans on the fly. We have also talked about maybe needing or wanting a “theme” for our year to anchor us and provide some direction or sense of purpose for the year ahead.

So whether you call it a resolution, reflection, aspiration or theme here are a few things we are thinking about for the coming year.

• Embrace a sense of adventure and all that comes with it — the excitement, fear, anticipation and the unknown to name just a few things.
• Lean into gentleness — for us each individually and together as a couple. We aspire to “radical self-acceptance” but even just a little more self-gentleness will be good.
• Ask for help/accept help. We are so lucky to have a loving support community and we can let them in even more.
• Slow down.
• Be generous.
• Don’t wait.
• Have fun.
• Drink more bubbly. 

Happy New Year!

This is our second holiday season since Cassie’s diagnosis. Our first one, last year, did not go all that well. Like most families we have our share of holiday traditions. Parties we attend. Celebrations we host. Silly sweaters we wear. Foods we love. Foods we quibble over (like Dan’s annual attempt to update the old fashioned green bean casserole at Thanksgiving). Gifts we send. On and on. 

Traditions are good. They are something to look forward to. They’re fun. They anchor us and provide comfort. So last year we didn’t really change a thing. We did it all. Actually, we did even more as we raised the bar on ourselves by adding new dishes to some meals and cramming in new events between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We thought that we had better pack it all in because “who knows what next year will bring or how Cassie will feel?” It was too much.

To be clear last year’s holidays weren’t horrible. They just didn’t turn out as we had expected. Of course it was great to spend time with family and to see friends and without question the food was delicious (well not the “new” green bean casserole but everything else). It was just that we really wiped ourselves out and for the first time in our lives together we couldn’t wait for the holidays to be over. We were also so busy (and Cassie had so much less energy) that we wound up being disconnected at different times as Dan tried to compensate all on his own for Cassie’s diminished capacity. Finally, we came to realize that last year we had inadvertently made ourselves really sad. That’s because we had set up a direct comparison between the way all of our traditions used to feel (pre-diagnosis) and how they felt in our first set of holidays post-diagnosis and that turned out not to be a good comparison. 

We have subsequently discovered that having hard holidays is pretty common for couples wrestling with a terminal cancer diagnosis. We have both heard lots of stories in our support groups and discussed it during therapy. One wise person observed that you have to go through “all of the seasons” to truly understand how much everything — every holiday, occasion, anniversary, tradition, etc. — has changed. 

So now we’ve been through all the seasons, and while we still have lots to learn, we are approaching this year’s holidays differently. We are creating some new traditions for our “new normal” so that we are no longer making side-by-side comparisons to the way things used to be. We are doing less and asking for more help. We are building in down-time. We are checking in with each other often and altering plans as necessary to stay healthy and connected. We are trying hard to appreciate these holidays for what they are and for all that we have right now and not look backwards with nostalgia or forwards with angst. It still feels really different but at least so far it’s a lot better than last year and our hope is that along with our ever-present sadness we are also creating room for some holiday joy to return. Oh yeah and this year’s re-imagined green bean casserole was better too so we have that going for us, which is nice.