Trigger warning: cancer/death
Edit- messed up a date.
(This may be long) Sooooo where do I start? I knew this day would come. I’ve never intended on hiding it, and today, during my 6 year old’s bedtime routine, I explained why I wear two engagement rings.
Quick background: when I was 27, I was engaged to an amazing man (let’s call him Jake). We had that picture-perfect relationship. Literally never fought, were so obsessed with eachother, yadda yadda. One month post getting engaged, we were at dinner and he was complaining of weird double vision. After a quick text to a doctor friend, she advised going to the ER to get checked out because ‘you don’t ever want to mess around with the eyes.’
Got to the ER and he’s feeling fine. We were actually kind of balking at all of the other sickly looking people around us wondering how he fit in there. About 5 minutes after he gets the initial blood draw as well as a head CT scan, we get whisked back to the room. “We’re admitting you to the ICU right now, your blood counts are insane and you have bleeding on the brain.” They told us in that ER room straight up that it’s very likely a blood cancer. And spoiler alert, they were right- it was a very rare and aggressive form of leukemia. From there things went downhill at lightning speed. I’ll spare the details but basically he got sedated that evening and I never got to see him meaningfully conscious ever again. He got transferred to a cancer center (we have one of the top in the nation in my city) and he died 5 days later. He was 33 years old and very healthy.
To say that that was all a traumatic whirlwind would be putting it very lightly.
Fast forward, I’m now (and still am) married to the second love of my life. We went to college together and casually dated, had a solid friendship, and found our way back to eachother for round 2. We now have two beautiful little girls and a fabulous life that I could only dream of.
I’ll interject quickly to say that I never really grieved Jake’s death. i hardly cried the week he was in the hospital and when he died. I beat myself up for that and questioned why, but I believe that my brain wouldn’t let me even think about going there ‘to protect me?’ I was truly in shock. I’m now in therapy and do emdr and am just now starting to get into this 10 years later. My brain still doesn’t want to access those memories much. I digress..
At bedtime my 6 year old was holding my hands and feeling my rings. She knows all of the rings I wear and has never questioned what they are particularly. Until tonight. First she asked how do you know who to marry? I went into that whole shpiel of how you find someone you went to date, and eventually marry.. all that.
I told her you get a ring at proposal and then another at the wedding usually. She said.. so this one is when he asked to marry? I said no this one is.. and this is the wedding ring. Then what’s *this other* one?? I sighed and said.. I’ll tell you another time. She insisted.. mom tell me! She’s honestly ‘mature’ for her age and I believe in telling her things honestly and age appropriately. So I guess here we go.
I told her that someone else wanted to marry me before daddy did. She asked who? I told her Jake, but you’ve never met him. She asked why, and I said well he died. (We’re very open about death and it’s not taboo in our household— my husband’s dad passed a few years ago). She asked how he died, and I told her he was very sick. “What kind of sick?” (Like dang girl can you just stop asking questions now 😝). I tried my best to explain cancer to her. She knows about cells and some rudimentary biology so I told her that sometimes cells in our body do things they shouldn’t. Sometimes we can help that with medicine but sometimes we can’t. She then asked if Jake knew he had cancer before he died. Her questions eventually slowed.
She was solemn and curious and I did the best I could. I was morbidly impressed on the depth of her questions and how she wasn’t freaking out (not that that would have been a bad thing). It’s just like she really understood that was a very sad thing and was part of life.
I’m sitting here now post bedtime tearing up, but not even in a sad way really. I’m in awe of my daughter, and I’m also really glad I got to share some of Jake with her. I told her she’s welcome to ask any questions she wants in the future. Life is a very fragile thing, what an experience this all is am I right?
Dinner: the best Caesar salad wrap in town + Cajun fries #girldinner