Chapter Fourteen: Santa Has Cancer

To say that the holidays were stressful that year would be the understatement of the century. It felt like the whole world was having a bad year, it was the first year of the Trump presidency and tensions all over the world were high. I started to notice more and more that I was less and less tolerant of people’s obsession with their own problems and the lack of consideration for others. It is a funny thing to be removed from the usual stress of the season and watch people cut each other off, obliviously hurt or ignore others or present themselves in such a fake and offensive way with stunning regularity. I thought often when people were super rude or shitty about the adage of not knowing the fight that another person is going through. I usually didn’t bring up the Cancer because I was still wrestling with the ramifications of my treatments. My central focus was more on trying to get through the daunting list of items that we wanted to get done over the holidays, which did little to help with our stress. All the extra stuff in the house from people’s Christmas orders coming in from Stephanie’s businesses was frustrating but the house was cluttered from the decorations, to say nothing of the general mess as well, so it meant that I spent most of my time continuing to clean and purge what I could throughout the house.

On one of the nights I was able to get out to see an old friend from when I had done Basic Training, named Pete, to go and see Jim Jefferies downtown. It was good to see him. Pete and I had sailed together on Calgary for almost three years, so it was good to catch up. The show was absolutely hilarious, and it gave me a nice break from the Cancer experience, but I was still in a lot of pain. The visit home for Dave’s wedding was really nice but I was less and less able to control how I felt about things and was feeling more anxious in my day to day life. After the show I sat back in the car and sorted myself out and O Holy Night came on the radio. Of all Christmas carols it was my favourite, especially if it is done in the operatic way of the women that sang it that night. It caused me to break down crying and I had a hard time stopping. My depression was getting worse and if Jim Jefferies couldn’t truly cheer me up then there was no way that I could help myself. I needed to see someone.

Eventually the big day came, and I drove into the base to see my therapist for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there because I only had the experience of popular media for my impressions of how therapy worked. I remember thinking of the Sopranos as I made my way in and asked myself to what extent the session would feel like the sessions there. I felt good as I drove in because in my mind I was finally going to begin to get help. The nightmares were every bit as visceral as I have described and recurred throughout this period every single night and they tormented me. The stress of the season being so high as well meant that my expectations were high because I was banking on it to ‘fix me’ as soon as possible. The traffic was decent, and I made good time, parked, and took a seat in the waiting area. I was a bit anxious to see who they had found for me. I had mixed experiences with psycho/social work in my career but was determined to avoid judging a book by its cover and wanted so badly to be a good patient to let the healing begin.

I waited patiently and examined the rack of pamphlets that were there for various health issues but was surprised to see no information about testicular cancer anywhere. There were brochures for prostate and breast cancer but nothing on mine. I know that it bothered me, but I wasn’t entirely sure why, really it wasn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme, but I know it bothered me enough that I still remember it. I smiled at Christmas Vacation, which played silently on the TV, and refocused myself on the anticipation for my guy to show up which he did shortly thereafter. “Lieutenant Stephen Tomlinson?” I heard a man’s voice say as I looked up to see my therapist ready and waiting. I had never seen this guy before in my previous visits for pre and post deployment screening. He was tall and had reddish hair and a beard that was streaked with some grey hairs. His uniform was neat, and he seemed nice and was enthusiastic as he introduced himself to me with a hearty handshake “I’m Curtis,” he said, “you must be Steve, can I call you Steve?” “Yes, of course,” I responded which he followed with a hearty laugh. I felt immediately at ease around him and followed him to his office. My first impression of him was that he reminded me of Hank Scorpio from the episode of The Simpsons where they move to Cypress Creek. His voice was very similar, and he was charismatic so that was part of it, but he even had a similar sort of look with his rusty beard so I smiled at that connection as we made our way into his office.

We walked in to what had been a standard clinic exam room. The exam bed had been removed and the usual décor of medical instruments, disposables, and medications had been replaced by a large walnut coloured desk that had been converted to a standing work station in the far corner next to some filing cabinets. The majority of the room was occupied by two chairs flanking a small table. A set of bookshelves sat in the corner across from the chairs and was filled with books that referenced PTSD, trauma, couples therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and so on and was peppered with nautical decorations such as a small model of an old school engine order telegraph, a frame filled with knots and a small sailor statue. He had pictures of his kids on the top of the book shelf which I liked because it helped me to know that he was a father as well. I studied his various degrees and certificates that occupied the bulk of the wall space and took a seat on the chair further in the room. He had a rug that really tied the room together that helped, oddly enough, to give me a warm fuzzy right from the start that this man would be able to help me.

Curtis took a seat on the chair next to me and we hit it off immediately when I told him that I really liked his rug and he got the reference to the Big Lebowski. As it turned out Curtis did his time before he had decided to commission and pursue social work. He had left the fleet as a Master Seaman boatswain (aka bosun) and had served in MCDVs, and the steamers that had preceded our current frigates, so he knew about the ins and outs of being an actual sailor. That helped tremendously because I was still in a lot of denial about my station in life and was still eagerly digesting any connection I could muster to the fleet that I missed so much. I was impressed with his CV and we talked a bit on his experience before things turned over to me. I introduced myself and gave my spiel which felt at the time like I was doing a board interview. After I had covered my experience I got to the matter at hand and described the diagnosis, the prognosis, the treatments and some background on cancer because it was not something he had experience with.

Eventually we were through the chaff and the introductions and I found myself staring at his books and trying to think of an answer to Curtis’ direct question: “so why did you need to see me?” I thought because it was time to put it into words and I wanted to convey the unusual feelings without sounding like I was trying to diagnose myself.

“Well I have been having nightmares every night, the same nightmare where I am getting chemo and I wake up in a panic and am sometimes sick to my stomach,” I began, pausing when I needed a second to comport myself. I continued, discussing the triggers, the anxiety and the numbing pain that I felt was consuming me. He listened intently and only chimed in to gain clarification on points. I told him about how I didn’t understand why I was able to handle the tanker stuff so well but that this had been such a struggle and Curtis started to ask about Protecteur. Before I knew it, it had been 2 hours and it was time to wrap up. I was taken aback by the sheer force of the catharsis that the session provided, and I was happy when Curtis offered to be the one to help me through everything. I felt our dynamic was good and I really didn’t want to start it all again with someone else. I figured that I wanted to face my Cancer as a military officer because it was the only way that I was able to process it and because it was so deeply engrained in the fabric of who I was. I figured it was easier to teach Curtis about cancer than to try to teach another therapist about the Navy. I headed home that day with a lot of hope and felt a great deal better than I had driving in. I could tell that therapy would agree with me.

As I said the stress of the season was in full swing and my Cancer was in most regards on the back burner for us because we had heard only good news since I had started chemo. Our family was very busy trying to get cards together, baking, shopping, decorating, and helping with school functions. Stephanie and I were obsessive about trying to hit all the marks while simultaneously trying not to completely burn out. In among the activities of the season were the various follow-up appointments that were dizzying, but we managed as best we could and were supported by amazing friends who made the stress that little bit easier to carry.

My counts had stalled out with a Beta HCG of 4 and I felt as close to a state of normal as I had since sailing back home during Op Caribbe. Whenever I was down I consoled myself with the fact that I did have a therapist and the problems could be handled. When I needed inspiration, I found myself engaged in periods of deep reflection and thinking a great deal about the people who had come to inspire me and who I now saw in a totally different light, both in my personal life and with celebrities as well.

One who stood out was Gord Downie, the frontman for The Tragically Hip. They had very much been upheld by literally millions of Canadians as Canada’s band but for me personally growing up I never cared much for their music, largely because of the twangyness of Gord’s voice. They had a deeply Canadian vibe you could hear from Neil Young or Matthew Good, but I just didn’t get the obsession with The Hip back then. I respected them though. I was a musician myself in high school, I played bass guitar in several bands that went nowhere but I remember that I respected them as musicians and I enjoyed seeing them perform live at a few events over the course of my life. I thought very little of them until it was announced that Gord had terminal brain cancer. The announcement for their farewell tour came when I was training as a navigator. My friend Jordan had told me about it after he had gone to see them right out of the start in Vancouver and was floored by the experience and raved about it while we set up the simulator for some navigation training one morning. He spoke passionately about the raw emotion of the moment, the total beautiful sadness that the crowd shared together as they and Gord wept their way through the somber song “Long Time Running.” I know that my opinion changed about them and about Gord in that moment because of the passion in Jordan’s voice. It was so much more than the music, it was so deeply touching and human, and it was clear that the experience had changed him.

This tour continued for a while as the Hip made their way slowly city to city and while they were there the nation swelled like a great wave of unity from sea to sea. The tour culminated in the band’s final show in Kingston ON, their hometown. It was broadcast nationwide and watched the by millions of fans and the new masses of supporters which had grown to love the band through the tragic beauty of Gord’s character. In the end the band had played their swansong and it was celebrated. One of the pictures from the event showed Gord in a white hat with a feather, deeply emotional, arms crossed, weeping. It is a heart-breaking photo and one that became very much seared into the consciousness of most of Canada. I remember that I thought of Gord when I was undergoing chemotherapy and especially later as I started to process the experience and tried to cope with my demons. Unfortunately, Gord had passed away in October when I was struggling just to move around the house and I suppose I thought of him more as I came to know that he and I were connected by this terrible disease. It was a similar sensation to what I felt at the Terry Fox exhibit before I went in.

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On December 14th, 2017, only 11 days from Christmas, I got a call from the Cancer Center. I had been cleaning the bathroom and spoke to them while I sat on the floor to clean around the toilet. “Yes, Stephen?” Doctor Joanna’s secretary said. “We need you to come in a bit earlier than your appointment in January so Dr. Joanna can talk to you about something that she has found in your blood tests.” I was speechless, and the call ended before I had time to process what she had just said. Once I finished talking to them I dropped my phone. I started to feel overwhelmed and scared. It occurred to me in that moment that this would be my life from now on. I would only need an appointment change or a call to send me right back here in a panic. “They want to move up my appointment to just after Christmas because of something to do with my blood tests? What about them?” I thought to myself as the helplessness of the situation struck home and I started to cry.

I sat there on the floor of the bathroom, in many ways my spot for the shittiest parts of this journey and let the pain slip out of me. Stephanie heard me, rushed upstairs, and crawled over. She held me and asked why I was upset. I stammered out that I had been called and that something was up with my tests. She told me that I needed to call them back and ask for Dr. Joanna to call me because I couldn’t wait until the 28th to find out what the news was. They ended up calling back anyway because they forgot to tell me to go get another blood test right before my appointment. I told the receptionist that I needed to talk to Dr. Joanna and she said that she would call me later. I went back to cleaning. I was so grateful to Steph for telling me to ask for a call back, I would have just dealt with it otherwise.

After several hours my phone rang again. I was standing in our bedroom at the foot of the bed. It was Dr. Joanna. She asked after me. I told her about my nightmares and how I was seeing a therapist for PTSD after the chemo. She sounded heartbroken to hear it and offered her sympathy and reminded us of the services that were offered by the Cancer Centre. I thanked her for the reminder but said that I was pretty upset by the appointments being moved up. She said she understood and emphasized that she was sorry, and she had wanted to avoid the conversation until after the holidays. Once she said that I felt my heart ache because I knew that it was bad news. “Stephen,” she said, with a pause. “I am really sorry to tell you that your blood counts are rising again. I thought at first it could be an anomaly, so I watched the next few tests to be sure before I called you, but your HCG has been consistently rising for over a month. I am sorry to say that this indicates that the Cancer has survived the chemo and is returning to your body.” I was in shock. The news was like being hit by a car. I say that without hyperbole because I had been hit by a car before. She told me just to do the tests and to try to enjoy the holidays, we would talk on the 28th and make some decisions. I agreed as my voice cracked. She wished us a happy holiday and I hung up.

Once again, I dropped my phone. I gripped the edge of the bed and shook and tried to breathe because the surge of emotion that was building was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was so deep and all-encompassing. I could feel my mask shatter. I felt naked and totally defenseless, and in that moment, I broke. I started to cry through the deep breathing that I couldn’t settle as I felt myself start to hyperventilate. The deepest darkest fears I had harboured for a month, that haunted me at night and had woken me from sleep were coming true. In that moment all the terror, frustration, sadness and anger came together like a chemical reaction that built and expanded and overwhelmed me like a tsunami. I lost the strength in my legs as the surge moved from my feet upward and I fell to my knees. I breathed heavier and growled as I buried my teeth into the edge of the mattress and, as the surge burst out of me, I screamed. It was like an eruption. I shook, and I cried, and I felt for the first time a rage so deep it frightened me. It was the rage of Achilles and of Captain Ahab. I felt for the first time the kind of rage Melville described with Ahab piling upon the whale’s hump and in that moment, just as with Ahab, if my chest had been a cannon, I would have shot my heart onto the bed. The primal scream I let out scared Stephanie. I settled and wept and struggled to catch my breath and I spit the words “I HATE THIS FUCKING DISEASE!” out through my tears and felt a sudden calm wash over me as the surge of emotions dissipated. It was like being hit by lightning.

In that moment I felt what Gord felt in that picture. I thought of it right then as I felt myself start to fall into the deepest darkest depression of my life. The sensation of that moment was a kind of deep sadness and emptiness, bitterness and rage but tempered by the most gracious feeling of overwhelming joy and thankfulness to have been blessed with the gift of life. The duality of the moment tore me in half and my thoughts rushed as I began to conceive my mortality. As I looked further into things I came to realize the seriousness of my predicament but was weary to accept a lot of what I knew to be true; in many ways this was the moment that I truly began to accept that I had Cancer. I had thought of it during chemo and it was obviously serious, but I was so sure the chemo had done it I had never even considered what I would do if it wasn’t successful. I had planned to ask to go back to work at my next appointment, that was clearly not in the cards.

Later as the news petered in the shock of it all slowly eroded me, I felt deeply sad and mourned myself and came to feel the blessings of my life and considered how I would want to go if I couldn’t win this fight. It was in the darkness of that misery that I remembered the picture of Gord again and I thought of him even more. I knew then that I had felt how he did in that moment and I came to know that for some short time he and I were warriors in the same fight against Cancer. Thinking of him helped me keep perspective. He and I were soldiers in the same fight and I would carry our bond with me forever. We were connected in my mind and my heart even though I never knew him. But from the moment of realization when I thought of the photo I knew that he was now a hero to me too.

I messaged Sean because I didn’t know where to turn at that time and I told him about what she had said and immediately added not to call me. I was almost paralysed and could type but I didn’t want to speak. I hadn’t told him about the PTSD and about a lot of the shittier parts of recovering from the chemo because I knew in my heart that he might still need it if his own counts ever went up again. In my head I knew that I wanted to get him to stop being my DA because things were going to start to get a bit too real for him. This was the very reason that a DA is not supposed to know the person they work for and they are not supposed to have a connection to the disease because of the effect it can have on them. I told him I needed to speak to him, and we agreed to meet up at his office in a few days to talk.

In the meantime, I felt hollowed out and laid on my side of the bed staring into nothingness and silently wiping the tears away. Stephanie held me and we cried together. I asked her to find a therapist because I needed her to get help. She was traumatized by this whole experience, but I felt like she wasn’t accepting that and seemed determined to fight through it all, but the stress was getting to her and I knew that with this news I wasn’t going to be able to support her the way that I wanted to, or how a husband should because it was everything I had to hold myself together. This was obviously the biggest challenge we had ever faced together and all I could think of was her burying me and it amplified the scope of the pain until I was ready to call out. I didn’t want to burden her with my problems (even though she would insist on it) so I tried my best to beat the worst of the thoughts down and I tried to recompose myself. There was nothing we could do for now so we would have to just focus on the holidays and try to not let the appointment on the 28th be too much of a buzzkill, as though that were a reasonable goal. We knew as we started to calm that this was going to be an extremely stressful holiday.

A few days later I drove in to meet Sean at dockyard. He got me a coffee and we headed into his office at the Above Water Warfare school. We walked through the cubicles to Sean’s office which reminded me of the staff areas in St. Jean. As we made our way into Sean’s office and closed the door I vented. I cried at points, I didn’t care, I had no strength left to maintain the façade. I told him that there would be a lot of stuff coming up in the next while that might get too much for him and that I wanted him to please pass on the duty of DA to someone else. I couldn’t bear to pull him down with me. I was being serious too, I wanted him to go and to leave me. I was still falling into a depression unlike anything I had ever felt. I was haunted by my mortality and the thoughts of my death tainted every experience and robbed me of the joy in everything.

He told me there was no way he was going to leave; he was in the shit with me and he wasn’t going to just cut and run. I was speechless. We kept talking after I had recomposed myself a bit and I told him a bit about things that bothered me, about therapy, about how I felt hopeful that I was still going to come back from it but that the news had been a lot to take in. It was nice to talk a bit. I didn’t know how to talk to Stephanie about my death. About my fears of leaving her and the children alone, of the kind of man I would want her to find for my children and for her, of losing the sea, mourning my tour of duty and myself as I started to come to accept the reality that I may not get to watch my children grow up. He was a tremendous support and told me that we would face those challenges together unless I fired him. It felt nice to have that kind of support in my corner. After about an hour or so of talking he had to get going and I walked back to the front gate after he stopped and gave me a hug in the parking lot outside the school. We were very much brothers in the same fight and I was grateful for him.

The next day I got a message from Sara asking how things were and she agreed to meet down at the Lagoon for a coffee. I liked to go there to think about stuff and she agreed to meet me down there since her daughter was on that side of town for a birthday party and she needed to kill a bit of time anyway. I arrived first and parked near the northern extent of the peninsula. I walked past the beached logs that cover the embankment and moved down to the water’s edge and sat on a cement cover for a pipe that sat underwater, covered by the tide. I quietly watched the small waves of the tide rush against the beach and considered how high the tide was. It felt higher than I had ever seen. As I looked out at the ships sailing in the strait and listened to the hushing break of the waves against the beach I slowly broke down. I tried to stay composed but each wave breaking on the beach eroded me. A short time later I heard Sara’s familiar “hey man!” as she made her way over to me. I looked up and didn’t care about wiping away tears or trying to be brave. Sara was a special friend to me, sort of an odd friend from the outside given that I was a married man and one of my best friends was female, but over the course of knowing her we had developed a genuine Platonic friendship rooted in our mutual love of service and family. She had seen me cry before on several occasions and I wasn’t ashamed of showing my feelings. We had persevered through our injuries in basic training together and sort of become adults together as she fought through a messy divorce and I fought Cancer.

I stood up, grabbed the coffee she had bought for me and we started to walk down the beach. The small talk didn’t last long. I told her that I needed to tell her something and gave her the update that had shaken me to my core. I talked about how afraid I was and started to completely come apart as I explained my fears of leaving Stephanie and the kids alone and about how upset I was that I had to go through this. “What did I do?” I asked. “I tried to be a good man. I loved my family and just wanted to serve my country. I just tried my best, I don’t know why this shit keeps happening to me. Its like I am being tested,” I stammered out, as I felt myself become less and less able to contain the emotions. I told her about how I was conceiving my mortality and for the first time I was “afraid I wasn’t going to win my fight and struggling to try to think of how the hell I am supposed to say goodbye to my kids.” As the last words of that sentence left my lips my knees felt weak and I totally fell apart. The image of myself in a hospital bed hugging my kids and saying goodbye was too much and I heeled over and struggled to catch my breath. Sara cried a bit too given the sadness of the moment but maintained her composure throughout.

When I had descended to a crying mess I couldn’t speak and was trying not to hyperventilate, and she asked if she could give me a hug. We didn’t hug much. Maybe it was because we were aware that it might be misinterpreted but despite how close we were we rarely ever touched beyond the occasional handshake. I tearfully accepted her offer and we hugged and cried together. My knees were still weak from the emotions, but the catharsis was helpful. She had listened intently to what I had to say and calmly told me that it was ok to feel that way and to be scared. She was kind and understanding and tried to help me ease the panic. She reminded me that I was getting crushed because I was looking at the whole journey and not the small steps it would take to get there. I felt fragile and was still struggling to stay upright. She moved in front of me and told me to look at her. “Steve I have known you for seven years. You are so strong, and you can beat this, I know you feel lost, but it will be ok. I know it will. You are not alone.” I calmed down a bit more. It was nice to just let out the pressure of the feelings that were crushing me under their weight. Keeping things bottled up to handle my issues myself was eating me up inside and I later came to see that it was positively idiotic to try to face it alone.

As I calmed we continued down the beach and talked. We moved past the heavy stuff once I had calmed down more and the rest of the coffee was more the typical innocuous banter about the day to day. It was therapeutic. I told her about how I had started therapy, we shared that because she had seen a therapist for a while. We ended up on a bench and chatted about the sea, about people we had served with, our deployments and families. She had a new boyfriend that Steph and I had met in May after I had come home from sailing in Saskatoon and they had moved in together and I was very happy to hear it was working out for her. She deserved the kind of happiness that he brought her. It was good to vent out some of the pain that I was carrying that I felt I couldn’t share with Stephanie because I didn’t want her to stress about me. I was also afraid to pass on my fears and my own worries to her when I knew that she was probably carrying the fears of having to be a widow and raise our children alone, looking after housing and money. It was why I wanted her to see a therapist because I couldn’t help her through this journey the way a husband should because I needed to get my own head right and I needed her to help herself.

Friends had offered to help and to talk to Steph about therapy, but I knew it was the kind of thing that she needed to do on her own terms. I was grateful to them though for the offer. I felt a bit stronger after talking with some friends and later met with both Jeannine and Curtis to delve into the meat of what was bothering me. I needed the whole thing and was still lost. As I began to work through stuff over that first week of the new Cancer I began to feel stronger and came to realize that I needed to stop worrying about the size of the mountain and grabbed the first stone to begin fighting my way back.

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When I thought to myself about the nature of my journey and on people that I knew personally or through popular culture one of the most important people for me was a woman named Una. Una was the wife of a former manager of mine from Wal-Mart in Ottawa. She was diagnosed with Breast Cancer only days after I was diagnosed. We had very similar fights and our chemo treatments overlapped so in my mind she and I were in it together. I had received a very positive message from her husband, Steve, the day I announced the diagnosis on social media offering encouragement to myself and Stephanie. I couldn’t believe it when 2 days later I found out about her.

Our regiments were very different including the sequence of things, times, drugs and all the rest, but the raw experience bound us even though we had never met face to face. She and Steve were runners, doing multiple marathons in a week and posting run-streaks lasting over 1500 days. I followed their marriage and their commitment to each other on Facebook as one of those families you keep up with but never see. Initially, we were in the shit together. We were starting chemo for the first time within days of each other and we fought together from across the country. She even sent out special sleeves for my PICC line that she used that looked like tattoos.

I remember though that when I was done the chemo and I was stewing in the pain that it had caused I felt slightly bitter toward her. I hated myself for feeling it, but I could feel it. I felt like I was here just sitting around like a bum, hanging around my house, weakened but free, and she was still in the shit. Her chemo regiment was delivered over twenty-one weeks, so she continued for over two months after I had finished. I would see her posts and the support pouring toward her and her “let’s do this” attitude and I would feel even weaker and that feeling of weakness helped me to justify the pain I was causing myself. “After all,” I would think to myself, “who am I? What do I have to complain about? She is still in there fighting and you are sitting around playing Call of Duty and feeling sorry for yourself.” Before the Cancer came back I was almost ashamed of how easy I’d had it because apparently deep down I must love misery and being awful to myself.

One day though, at the end of her treatments, just after I had started to see Curtis, I had just started to let myself accept that I was indeed still very much in the shit. It was through this period of gradual acceptance that I started to feel bad for even thinking in the smallest way anything negative about her. I had been jealous of her courage and felt inadequate but no longer had the resolve for a brave face. By then that she announced that she had finished chemo and I was so happy for her. I truly knew the pain that she was in and the struggle she had fought, but what struck me was a video she posted. I had seen lots of pictures. Posed, prepared pictures but had never seen her really move before or the moments between the posts that were made. In the video she is ringing the bell that they had on the oncology floor.

In my mind she would have walked up and clanged it away while shouting in victory; a far cry from the broken and weakened state that I had left the hospital in when I was done. What I saw changed me. I saw a vulnerable and injured person who walked up to the bell with her hands held against her chest and tears in her eyes who grabbed the cord and rang it sheepishly with a look of pure joy but with a certain indescribable pain in her eyes that I recognized. I had seen it in myself. I cried the first time I watched it because I was so happy for her and I wanted so badly to message her and apologize for even thinking to myself any of what I had. I wanted to tell her that I knew and that I understood the pain and I wanted her to know that I was in pain too and that it was ok to feel that way. Eventually I did message, but this was all part of a profound realization that I had about the way that we present ourselves to one another. especially in the age of social media. In trying to reassure ourselves and in trying to put forward a brave front we are helping to contribute to the culture that makes people feel inadequate because they are stuck chasing a fantasy. I couldn’t stand the thought of presenting my story in a way that would make others feel less or question themselves, so I decided to be forthright and I posted online about my PTSD, and emphasized that things were not alright because I wanted people to know in their hearts that it was ok to admit to yourself that you are scared, and it didn’t make you less brave. In fact, in some ways it made you more so.

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As Christmas approached, despite all the help, Stephanie and I were still struggling to keep up and were feeling the stress building more and more daily. Stephanie was getting messaged by people complaining that she wasn’t sorting the deliveries from her home businesses fast enough and we were behind in our wrapping and desperately worried that we were going to screw up everything and ruin Christmas. The kids were the biggest motivator for us. It was impossible for us to lay in bed depressed all day when there was shopping to do, events to attend and packages to send out, to say nothing of remembering to move the Elf on a Shelf creatively when all I wanted was to crawl into a hole and cut myself off from the world. I was still very much in pain mentally and started to type some of my journals to pass the time so those stories could be preserved; I found that it helped me cope with the uncertainty of the whole thing. I found myself more and more tortured by the experience as I started digging into my mental wounds in therapy and doing that over the holidays left me overburdened with stress. I found myself in a crisis of faith, so I decided to meet with Jeannine to try to make sense of things from a spiritual perspective. Mentally I felt like I was shaken but I knew that I needed to pull it together.

I arranged to see Jeannine at the base. I went down to the church where she worked and waited for her. I remember walking in and seeing the stained glass and the altar. It was the first time I had been in a church since my ordeal began. I walked up to the front and out of habit crossed over my heart and sat in the front row and stared blankly into space. I felt myself becoming unburdened as I considered what I wanted to say to her when she arrived. The more I looked around and thought about my life I could feel myself being moved, like in that moment God was paying attention to me. I folded out the kneeling bar and got down and started to pray. I have only truly prayed a few times in my life. After I was hit by a car, before my NOAB interview, before Seth and Sophia were born, in the ER after my fall on the cargo net, on the pilotage after the fire on the tanker, before my final run on FNO, during chemo when I had begged to die, and right then as I waited for Jeannine. When I did truly pray it was a very emotional experience. My relationship to God and my faith are a complex matter.

I was disillusioned with it all when I was in high school as case after case of sexual abuse stories broke in the news and it drove me to feel alienated from the church and that I had to find my own path. When I was in university I studied world religions through some of my electives and experienced an incredibly diverse view as I experienced services for faiths I was less familiar with and tried to understand how other people saw the universe. I remember feeling even more at odds with Christianity as I learned about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the suppression of science and the myriad other crimes that it was guilty of during the dark ages and sought to actively distance myself, pursuing instead my interests in Buddhism, Judaism, classical polytheism, psychology, and religion throughout my time at Carleton.

As my life began to gain some level of focus and I began to move toward my career in the Armed Forces, I found myself grateful for my breadth of religious experience because I feel like it helped me to feel a bit more understanding of the nature of faith as I began to move back to my Anglican roots. My conceptions of God and the universe, however, remained influenced by my experiences in university so the resulting synthesis was complex and difficult to express. As I kneeled there and pondered my existence I felt very small and sat with my forehead resting on the front of the pew and pulled my hands up to my face and wept. I thanked God for the blessings of my life and asked for guidance and strength to face the challenges ahead. Eventually I felt a hand gently touch my back. Jeannine had walked in and I was so deep in thought I hadn’t heard her. After she had gotten my attention she spoke very softly. “Hi Stephen,” she said as I stood up to give her a hug.

Jeannine had come to see me in chemo, but we hadn’t really spoken since the time alongside in Pearl Harbor. We walked back to a conference room at the front of the church where I took a seat and we started to talk. We talked about our chat in Hawaii and she shared some of the insights she gained from it and from her time there helping people recover from the trauma of losing Protecteur. I told her about Stephanie and the kids, my journey and my depression, my fears about the upcoming treatments and the uncertainty they carried with them. I generally remained in a very beaten position, with my head resting on the table and generally defeated demeanor that was the natural result of the exhaustion of unburdening of my soul. It was tremendously healing to purge all the worries and fears and say them aloud. It was amazing to me that I had found myself in the position I was in as I realized that I was piece by piece, bit by bit, accepting the realities of my potential death and my worries and anxieties about leaving my family alone.

I also shared with her something that had occurred to me while I was waiting to meet with her. Part of me wasn’t even sad, or upset or even angry. I was grateful. Pure, transcendent gratitude to God for the gift of my life, of my family, my career, my friends and the experiences that I had been blessed with, both good and bad. I told her about how I had come, since my talks with friends, Stephanie, and Curtis to not be so hung up about the why and I stopped feeling angry for having Cancer because I wasn’t mad about the disease. I came to see that I was upset because I wanted to stay on this beautiful ride a little bit longer. I knew that I would need to accept the possibility of my death and to gradually shed all my fears and inhibitions about it so I could face the Cancer head on and swing for the fences. She told me after about two hours of talking that she felt humbled that I would share so much with her and she told me that she was taken back by my ability to see within myself so clearly. We prayed together at the end of the meeting where she called on God to reach down and extend the gift of health and peace to me and to my family. I thanked her for her ear which she reminded me was always available and we hugged. I drove home with a less heavy heart and tried to focus on the season while listening quietly to the Christmas music playing on the radio.

That night as I was sitting at home with Stephanie after we got the kids to bed she talked about how she was upset that we were so behind in things and she had wanted so badly just to do it all and show everyone how tough and resilient we were, but she was just so sad and overwhelmed and she broke down. I went over to her and held her and we talked. It hurt my heart to see her so overwhelmed, but I also knew that I couldn’t help her with her depression at that time since I was struggling to fight through my own. All I could really do was listen and hold her and tell her that she was not alone and that in the end I believed that it would all be ok. I told her about how no one expects all of that from us and that it is such a waste and is so damaging to try to force ourselves to pretend like this was a year like any other. She agreed and as I continued to speak we started to eliminate things that just didn’t matter that much really and let the stress from them wash away. We emphasized the things we really needed to do and focused on them. We found which parts could be put off until later and which were time sensitive and right then and there started packing the family gifts that were strewn all over the house. Once that was done the next day we got them out and we finished our shopping for each other and I started to wrap when I could to try to help even if I sometimes had to take a break to have a minor breakdown.

We decided to skip the Christmas cards. We had bought some, but they sat next to Steph’s chair in the living room as the time to get them to people before the big day dwindled daily, but we just couldn’t find time or energy to fill them all out, address them and get them sent. Our energy was being drained on an almost mythic level by the kids who spent each day getting more and more excited, losing more sleep and bickering with one another. It was exhausting. We decided that baking for other families was going to be too much as well and tried to find the time to get stuff together to bake for our family. Thankfully we ended up getting baked goods from a few people from the neighborhood that helped a lot.

April, one of Stephanie’s friends from volunteering at Seth’s school, came by one night and didn’t even bat an eye at the mess of the house and walked up to Steph and hugged her. It was very sweet because of the sincerity that she conveyed. She spoke quietly in Steph’s ear and said something that made Stephanie cry. April pulled back and gave her a smile and said, “you deserve it because you are a good person, ok?” and she let a few tears slip as she opened a box she had brought with her. It was a full-on cookie decorating kit with icing and bags of candies and an entire tray of sugar cookies cut into trees and little men. It was touching. This was the kind of thing Steph had really needed, she could take something off her list that was bothering her but was hard to work in time wise. We were touched, and it was another in a series of profound renewals of faith in humanity throughout our journey. They were people who felt compelled to help ease our pain like candles flickering in the darkness, standing strong against the air of selfishness and coldness of the holiday season. As the gestures and the kind words mounted we were more and more touched by them and felt blessed for the gift of community.

Another of the things on the list was to go down to the mall and get a family photo with Santa. We had done several that season in Ontario with the kids, but we always got a picture together as a family and there was only a day or so to go before Christmas and we were just done. Stephanie told me that she still wanted to do them and didn’t care about getting dressed up, we would just take the kids from school and pop by the mall on the way home. Steph and I just wore our normal clothes. I put on a golf shirt to class it up from the Metallica T-shirts I generally wore, but Steph and Seth were in their normal day to day clothes. Sophia had a pajama day at school and was super excited to wear her special snowman jammies for her class to see. We knew we wanted the picture but wanted her to enjoy her day, so we just brought her to the mall wearing them. We didn’t care. We had no energy to put on the front or to pretend that we were coping when we weren’t. Normally these photos are done with lots of poses and tweaking. Stephanie is a photographer, so she is picky about shots and wants the right one. We just wanted to get home so that we could join Sophia in our jammies and call it an early day. We sat, and they took two shots. We looked at them. Steph picked the bottom one and we left with our package. To look at the picture now it is kind of hilarious. I look into our eyes I see two people who have given up on the façade that the whole world seemed to think was most important at that time of the year and just held onto what mattered most. I am so glad that we preserved the memory of our beautiful imperfection because the plain honesty of the shot makes it one of my favourite pictures of my family.

A few days before our picture at the mall we had visited the Butchart Gardens, another of our annual traditions. They are massive and incredibly beautiful gardens north of Victoria that feel like a living postcard. They decorate it all with an elaborate light display each year over the holidays that allow them to operate year-round. The lights are remarkable, with portions in the forests resembling something out of Avatar and every season we enjoy the lights and the hunt for displays representing the 12 days of Christmas.

Whenever we finish we go to the gift shop and buy an ornament for our tree. I started to feel overwhelmed when I was in the store because it was busy and the memories there surged through me because of the way that joy became tainted by thoughts of doom on the other side of Christmas. I needed to step outside to vape a bit to ease the anxiety that was making me feel cold deep inside. I remember as I stood outside and looked in and saw Steph and the kids going through the checkout I thought of how much I loved them and then my depression took over and it felt like I was watching them celebrate the tradition without me in some future year in which the Cancer had taken me. It was heartbreaking. I watched Stephanie settle Sophia while trying to encourage Seth to interact with the cashier. To look at them you would never know they were being eaten by my Cancer too. I thought about how wonderful she was as a mother and how I just wasn’t ready to go yet. I found myself trapped in these emotional wells more and more and just wanted to feel normal again. Whatever normal would be after everything.
Soon it was Christmas Eve. I was starting to worry because after Christmas I wouldn’t have anything standing between me and my appointment with Dr. Joanna. I was coping a bit better as time went on and my therapy sessions with Curtis continued to help me to frame and guide my perceptions of myself. It was a period of tremendous personal growth but just as with physical growth, it came with pains. I was an overflowing well of emotions and was crippled mentally by the fears and apprehensions of it being my last Christmas. That thought was so pervasive in my consciousness that the depression sometimes felt like I was watching the colour bleed out of the world. The joyous moments were tainted by those thoughts and it was everything I had to not break down from even minor stressors.

We got ourselves set up for our usual traditions around the holidays for that day. Most of them happened that night so the day was mostly spent getting the house ready for the evening and desperately trying to finish the wrapping so we could enjoy ourselves later. Our Christmas traditions are pretty regimented and feature several levels of enjoyment with the family. On the night of Christmas Eve, we always head to Mass before heading with cookies or chocolates and dropping them off with the local firefighters who are working on Christmas Eve as a tribute to Steph’s grandfather who served Etobicoke Ontario’s Fire Department for over three decades. We would then head home where I would make a massive spread of hors d’ouvres and we would all watch Christmas movies. Usually Christmas Vacation and then White Christmas for just Steph and I while we would dish out the gifts. My heart wasn’t in it, but I fought through it because it was about so much more than how I felt. As I said I was so committed to keeping Christmas in place for the kids that I fought through the best that I could.

We headed to Mass that night where we saw Jeannine and several other friends that we only see once in a while. The church was putting on a pop-up pageant and Sophia was asked to play the part of a sheep. It was sort of weird because my whole life I had seen pop-up pageants in movies and tv shows but this was the first time that I had ever actually seen one in real life. It was very sweet. The kids were so proud of themselves and I remember being struck by how well many of them read at the podium. There were some of the standard Christmas carols and good company. I was just trying not to cry. A few days prior, when we had gone to see Sophia perform at her pre-school Christmas recital it was absolutely adorable even though it was a total shit show of coordination. I remember watching Sophia in the middle and thinking to myself that she was the most beautiful, innocent creatures that I had ever seen. She was nervous at first but soon joined the group of them. Tears flowed pretty freely from me; I didn’t care who saw.

The pageant was more of that. I was kind of a wreck, but I didn’t care if other people starred or saw. Many of them knew who I was and what I was going through, so I didn’t feel I needed to muzzle it. I watched with tears in my eyes and felt at peace for the first time in weeks. Later as the service was done, Stephanie and I stopped to pray before heading out. For me it was basically a resumption of how things were in the church with Jeannine. Stephanie was there too and looked about the same. The kids just wanted to go so we could check all the remaining things off our to do list and get home so Santa could come. Some small part of me knows that one day they will put two and two together and understand that that year Santa did the best job that he could and that he just needed an extra minute to pray with his wife and hoped he could do a better job if he got a chance next year. We both cried and then came together and hugged. We both smiled slightly through our tears, we had both been given a moment of peace to enjoy the night after all the stress of the holidays that washed over us now and left us ready to meet the new challenges ahead.

As we finished we turned to wish a Merry Christmas to some of our fellow parishioners who were standing patiently and watching us with tears in their eyes. At that moment if not before I became very self-conscious of the added impact that my actions or things I would say had on those around me because of the disease that I wanted nothing to do with. They came over and hugged us and tried to hold themselves together while they wished us a Merry Christmas like they were offering condolences. It is a funny thing to make people consider their mortality simply by carrying on through something like Cancer. You end up admired and upheld by people as a symbol of strength and perseverance despite feeling like you are just scraping by and surviving.

Eventually, we headed out and dropped off the chocolates with the firefighters and headed home for our nice night together. It ended up going well. The hors d’ouvres didn’t burn and we had a solid spread and enjoyed one another’s company and lived in the peace that we were granted that night at church. After we had finished our dinner of finger foods, we ushered the kids off to bed, after they had laid out some cookies and milk of course. When we came back downstairs and started preparing the living room for Santa’s arrival, we took a moment of pause to watch some snow fall. It was surreal to see snow in Victoria. It had only snowed a handful of times in the six years we lived there and not once per year. It had been literal decades since the last white Christmas, but sure enough there it was. After we had laid out the gifts under the tree, and sat in peace to enjoy White Christmas, the large flakes poured from the sky as though set to the dulcet tones rung out by Bing Crosby. Before we headed up we checked on the snow and it had blanketed the neighborhood. We looked out our windows with the kids in bed and the gifts all under the tree and Stephanie and I enjoyed a quiet hug and felt like we had pulled it off after all. Santa was still Santa, even with Cancer.

The next day was Christmas morning, the big day that we had worked our way to through weeks of uncertainty and stress. We didn’t get out of bed right away; our Christmas day traditions eat up a lot of the day so that we are forced to just relax and enjoy it. We could hear the kids slowly emerging from the melatonin infused sleeps that we had put them down for the night before. We sat up and listened for them and could hear their doors creak open as they revelled in seeing their stockings and breakfast presents in the hall. They are allowed to open these and mostly get cheap toys and snacks to enjoy in the morning. We smiled as we listened to the frenzy in the hall. I was happy, but I had a cascade of sadness wash over me while I listened to them. It was like at Butchart Gardens when I had seen them at the check-out and felt like I was watching them as a spirit.

In that moment in my bed I felt like I was hearing the sounds of my children on some Christmas when I was gone, it broke my heart to think and I soon found myself breathing through the wave of sadness and then deciding that when I felt that way I would imagine it was the Cancer talking to me. I realized that I was done being so hard on myself and would rather be hard on the Cancer. That way I could tell it to fuck off and I could stop being mad at myself and direct the hate away from me. It helped, and I felt much better for most of the morning.

We ended up downstairs where I got the kitchen ready to make our special breakfast: eggs benedict, a staple Christmas tradition since I was a kid. I fired that up and the kids enjoyed their stocking stuffers and opened their presents from Santa. We ate our special breakfast and enjoyed each others’ company while the kids chomped at the bit to dive into the tree gifts. We worked through them throughout the day, we don’t do supper on Christmas, we emphasize the enjoyment of family, like on the Shabbos, but with Netflix. We kept it low key and just tried to enjoy the fact that there was no more holiday stuff to stress about. With some Skypes to the family, some enjoyment of our new stuff, and, of course, some clean-up of the Christmas bomb that had gone off we had a quiet, unremarkable family day. It was made special by the moment of peace in the midst of my personal war, when all the fears and uncertainties took a break so we could have a special family Christmas.

Eventually the 28th came and I had my big follow up appointment with Dr. Joanna. Stephanie drove me after we dropped off the kids at Tiff and Corey’s and made our way to the Cancer Centre. As had become a tradition for us when making this run, we stopped at Tim Hortons for food. We went through the drive thru and I got a large regular and a muffin. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach and deeply fearful of the unknowns that we were walking into. All the anxiety and all the scenarios played over and over in my head and were almost driving me crazy. I was adrift and felt so very far from Stephanie who was sitting next to me. On the radio the song Perfect by Ed Sheeran came on and I listened to it quietly and felt almost like it was written for Stephanie and I. In that moment I felt her hand on mine, squeezing my palm and then her fingers scratching the back of my head. “This song makes me think of you,” she said with a slight crack in her voice, and I lost it. I sat there being handed a coffee in the Tim Horton’s drive-thru with tears streaking down my face but in that moment, it was like I was shown the true beauty of love and its deepest meaning. I had always felt it but right then in the car I didn’t just cry out of fear, as we started toward the appointment, I wept because my heart was so deeply full of the power of my love for Steph. It was a beautiful moment and now the song makes me think even more of her.

Traffic was bad, and we arrived late. I was so mad, I despise tardiness. But soon enough I was sitting in the very same room that I had met Joanna in and where I was told definitively that I had Cancer. A short time later a nurse came to weigh me. I laughed and joked with her that it was such a cold move to take a guy three days out of Christmas and inundated with turkey dinners and such and weigh him, it’s a good thing that the experience had taken my last vestiges of pride or vanity. But soon that was done so we went back to waiting. We waited and fretted. I was almost overcome with anxiety and wanted to just get it over with. Eventually Joanna came in the room. She had her usual caring expression with a deep sense of radiating empathy in her eyes. She sat next to me with my file that had grown to about two inches in thickness.

She asked how I was. I told her about the symptoms that I was feeling and about the psychological effects. She held my arm and said in a calm but ominous tone that we had some things to talk about and some decisions to make. She decided to start with some good news because I guess it flows best that way and said that my lungs and chest lymph nodes are clearing still which is very good. Then she moved on to the bad news. “Unfortunately, the shape and size of the lymph nodes in the retroperitoneal area are still not good,” she said and then she indicated that I would need to undergo the RPLND in Vancouver. I knew to expect that so although it hurt in a way to hear it out loud and know that it was most likely going to happen, it at least ended the anxiety about the maybe or maybe not that had haunted me since the day it was first mentioned. She paused for a second and was clearly bracing herself. I could feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck in anticipation of the next thing she would say accompanied by a deep feeling of terror that passed over me in a wave, like getting goosebumps but much deeper. “The thing that I am very troubled by and that I am very sorry to tell you is we have found a new spot in your brain. It is small, but it is new and growing so we need to stop it and that takes precedence over the lymph nodes in my opinion.”

I was speechless. A few tears welled up as I tried to maintain my composure. Joanna grabbed my hand and continued. “I have already teed up with the other doctors and so you will see a new specialist to examine if we can remove it. If we can then I think surgery is the best option so I can have the tissue to help us learn more about what is going on in there and to help us stop more from forming. The other option of course is radiation and Dr. Abraham will be looking at your case to make his plan and on the 2nd of January we will meet and decide the best course of action”. Neither option was very appealing. I suppose on one side it was nice because I no longer feared the RPLND because it is so much worse than I could have thought. She then topped it off by telling me that I couldn’t drive anymore. She felt that I would be liable even in an accident that wasn’t my fault. It was like an epic kick when I was down. One of my last threads of my independence, gone. I was devastated and broke down.

Stephanie spoke for me. “He is having a hard time and was just recently diagnosed with PTSD from the chemo.” Joanna looked hurt suddenly, as she remembered our phone conversation two weeks previous. She asked about the symptoms and Stephanie and I told her about the nightmares, the depression, the panic attacks until Joanna stood up to get me a Kleenex. She started to well-up just a bit but was resolute to remain composed and she said she was sorry and that it is one of the risks with cancer and its treatment. Stephanie lunged at her and hugged her. “You don’t apologize for anything Joanna, you are trying to save his life.” Her voice broke and they hugged, then we hugged. It was a deeply human moment to see the frustration that my case brought her. It was personal for her, it was clear how much she wanted to fight for me. We left the appointment and felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I was so profoundly overcome. This was a scenario that I never considered outside of the wildest fears that rang in my head and I silenced by telling myself that it would be OK. I didn’t know how much more bad news I can handle.

After I had some meds to calm me down a bit we ended up at Tiffany and Corey’s house. Steph was trying to reassure herself and to stay strong, but I could tell she was very upset too. I came home and hung with Corey and played some games and I smoked some weed and was eventually left alone. I turned on the crackling fireplace that was on Netflix and the reality of some of the day hit me. I cried and almost yelped out in fear and frustration. I felt super cold and could almost feel like I was in shock. That night I smoked a lot more trying to relax while I tried desperately to feel normal, but deep down I felt like I was drowning. My licence, my independence, all the worries and anxieties that I had felt with the first tumours that were in my brain rushed to me like the drain at the centre of a whirling vortex.

I woke up early most mornings after that after and generally had broken, and unfulfilling sleeps. I still woke up each morning startled just like from my chemo nightmares and thought to myself that it changed as soon as I found out about my new brain tumour. I began to think I was no longer remembering my dreams as well but that the nightmares were still happening. I couldn’t really remember dreaming much for the last several months. Only the nightmares, and they come as incredibly vivid but fleeting dreams. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had a happy dream or didn’t wake up startled and depressed. I would wake up and sit in bed for about 45 minutes to an hour and usually find myself crying as I thought of all the things that were really bothering me. I would imagine my funeral, picture my last moments with Stephanie and the children and would break down. Eventually I would need to get out of bed to release some of the pressure, but I didn’t want Steph to wake up because it was so hard to talk about.

One night it was too much for me and I slowly made my way downstairs and into the living room and I tearfully plead with God, saying out loud “I’m not ready to go, I don’t want to go yet, there is so much I want to do.” I started to write to try to clear my head and to put the words on the page. The way I saw it writing was my way of preserving who I was. If I could finish my story, then I could die at least knowing it would be told. It was at that point that one of the central focuses of my fight was to finish the book that I hoped I could publish when it was all done.

As I started to read up on my Cancer to gain a better understanding of my enemy I started to become more depressed. There was so little on what I was experiencing. I was into a rarely seen degree of advancement of the disease and the particular type of Cancer, Corio Carcinoma, was incredibly uncommon to see in men since it is commonly seen in ovarian cancer, so there wasn’t a lot to go on and was pretty much into the case by case situations. My odds overall were not favourable the more I read. A re-presentation in the brain was a bad sign especially so soon after completing chemo. In general, my odds sat around 50/50 and some sites even had it lower at the level of 1 in 3. I regretted looking into it and was devastated because of how little was known about the type of Cancer that I was experiencing and how bleak my outlook was on a disease that the sites declared all but a guaranteed recovery on most levels earlier than we had caught it.

I was trying to keep the odds to myself and was sort of forced into revealing them to Steph through an innocuous reading of a text conversation with Corey that I hadn’t wanted her to see. I wanted Stephanie to maintain her resolve, I needed that strength on my side to fight through. When she read the message, she seemed bothered but didn’t say anything. I could tell from the way she said, ‘I love you’ and her body language that she was more bothered than she was letting on. I didn’t want to push the matter, so I left it. The next day I was a little late in messaging her back because I was talking with my friend Adam Bales and when she called, she was extremely upset. Adam dropped me off to get some bloodwork done and Steph was going to pick me up when I was done. It went smoothly, and I headed over to the car where Steph was waiting.

When I sat down, I could see immediately that Stephanie was very upset and was trying to keep it in. I hugged her close and told her that it was ok to let a bit out. And she completely fell apart. I tried my best to calm her. “I am really trying to stay positive but the 30% is haunting my dreams, I barely slept last night. I can’t lose you,” she choked out, before continuing to hyperventilate. I didn’t know what to say, I was at a loss and tried just to hold her and to listen to what she had to say. Stephanie started to come apart totally and said she couldn’t breathe and was about to run outside when just like a sign from heaven Perfect by Ed Sheeran came on again. I turned it up and told Steph just to listen to the song and try to breathe. I told her that it would all be ok, to me the song was about how our love can beat the Cancer and we held each other and listened to the music and cried together. The kids were in the backseat and confused but we needed that moment just to hold on so there was no time to worry or to fret about.

Later at home I was still sad. I wanted to talk to Steph about something, but I knew that it was going to upset her. I laid in bed alone and cried to myself while all the worst case scenarios played out for me. Stephanie came in and sat with me. She wanted me to open up because it was abundantly clear to her that I had a lot on my mind. I didn’t want to tell her about what was bothering me, but I just let go and decided it was time to tell her. I told her about one of the days when I was on Protecteur during the last port visit before the fire. Some of the guys had rented a car and we loaded in and drove all over the island of Oahu with three other BWKs. Dan was there, the friend who had stood with me on the Pilotage while we adrift and who had instructed me when I was on FNO. It was nice to get out and to see more of the island since I had been so restricted by the normal day-to-day of work on the ship and by the difficulty in getting around without your own vehicle there.

I told her about how we got on the highway and ripped it up the coast around the bay that makes up Pearl Harbor, past Aeia and Pearl City and continuing west to the western coast of the island. We stopped on the side of the road and went to a beach that was almost totally deserted, did some snorkeling, and grabbed a bit of Sun. Afterward we continued west until we ran out of road and we parked and walked out onto a ledge of volcanic rock and coral. I had returned there again later when I was sailing with Calgary with my friend, another BWK, Tony, during a missile shoot a few years later. I told her about how there is a park at the end of the road at the westernmost point of the island. It was nice to talk about because the image of that spot had been driving me crazy and amplifying the depression because it was one of the most beautiful spots in the entire world to me and I had been thinking of it nearly every day since I was told the Cancer had come back. I started to cry and looked down at my pillow while Steph sat next to me and rubbed my back as I finally worked up the courage to have the conversation that I had dreaded.

I paused for a minute to muster myself and just let go: “Stephanie if I don’t win this fight I am going to die.” I started to ugly cry but kept talking because I needed to get it out. “If that happens I need you to know that you were the dearest and most precious thing that could have ever hoped to hold and call mine. I could die peacefully and know that you are here looking after our beautiful children. You are the most caring and genuine person that I know. You are fearless in your devotion to those you love and I will always be grateful for having you to help me when I was so lost and afraid.” Stephanie was crying but she listened and she didn’t interrupt or stop me because I suppose she knew that I needed to say what I was getting at. “You have given me the greatest gift of life with our two little angels. I want you to know that I consider even our short time together to be the greatest and best blessing that I could have ever asked for. I so deeply love you that even if I am gone you need to know that I will stay with you in your heart forever.”

“So if I lose my fight”, I continued, “I want you to take a part of my ashes and put them in a coffee can and I want you to go to Oahu. Talk to Dan and he will tell you how to get there, it isn’t very hard. I want you to take the kids and whoever else and go to that spot on the Western Coast, stand out on the cliffs and watch the swells break their spray into the bluest water you will ever see. Look at the cliffs and mountains and feel the sea breeze and know that in that moment I will be right there next to you. Please scatter those ashes there. Then take anything that you get from my benefits and get you and the kids a house near some family. When you are ready find a good man who is worthy of you and don’t feel like you are betraying me. I don’t want you to be alone forever. but keep the rest of me with you and have us buried together so we can be together in the end.” Stephanie cried but listened and said, “ok.”

I felt such relief that she had listened and not told me to stop talking about it. It was nice to tell her and to feel the burden that keeping it in had put on me crumble away. Just one word, “ok.” It was all that I needed. It was the exact right word at the right time. Then I told her “its ok though because I don’t see that happening because I will beat this fucking disease and we will go there together and leave Cancer behind there, where I left the pain from the tanker.” Stephanie smiled through her tears and said, “its your dumping ground?” We both smiled and kissed and laid there and I felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders and my heart was full with love for her as we relaxed and enjoyed a moment of peace in the heart of the storm.

Next Chapter: RPLND