Our Last Good Days
Reflections on the final days before Brad's diagnosis
I snap a selfie as I sit alone on the abandoned shoreline, content under the glow of the fading sun, while Brad plays a round at a golf course nearby. The sand beneath me is warm, even though it’s October in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the precarious winds could shift at any moment, bringing with them the first snow of the year.
This is a rare moment of solitude after a full week of celebrating both our wedding anniversary and the fact that I was 5 years in remission from two bouts of cancer.
A perfect snapshot of a perfect life.
Taking this photo was proof of survival. Proof that I could - no, did - survive, and that our relationship could survive through it, too. This photograph was proof that we made it.
After doubts and fears and too many what-ifs, we were here. Alive. Together.
When I took the photo, completely content on that beach, I had no idea that within months, solitude would be a permanent fixture, and that Brad would be dead.
It was the last photo before learning that the pain in Brad’s back was not an infection, but cancer attacking his body - an uncontrollable weed, mercilessly growing and strangling organs and cracking bones.
This photo would come to represent the divide between life “before” and life “after.”
For years, I would look at this photo and think: that was it. That was the last moment of happiness - before hope disappeared and joy went from natural to forced.
For years, I wanted to go back to the girl in the photo. The one who lived fully in the “before.” The one who naively believed she survived her one hard thing and was done with future trauma.
Now, I look at her easy smile and ignorant bliss and I know: she no longer exists. Now, forever changed, she tiptoes the line between the life of the living and living with the dead.
I see her in this photo and feel both the love she had in that moment and the grief that would soon follow. Both the joy for what was and the pain for what would come.
I look at this photo and I want to warn her. To hold her. To tell her, “It will all be ok.”
Because of course, it both will be, and also, it will not.
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Thank you Dana. I too, seem to always think in terms of “before and after” these days. It is obvious from the pictures. What once was and will never be again. I was thinking about you both today, driving through the state. Exit number 22. Frost, Louisiana. I appreciate all you write and share.
As always, your writing is not just beautiful, your words also go straight to my heart. They speak to me and I feel less alone in the mess of thoughts about the "before and after loss sort of me".
In my opinion, you are a brilliant writer who shed light to so many topics and emotions within grief and life.
When I look at photos of myself before my husband got cancer and died within ten weeks, I see someone who thought she smiled from the bottom of her heart, someone who was blissfully ignorant to the possibillity of becoming a widow in the midst of life.
And yet, while looking at that smiling person, I know that some of the photos show a story that's not neccesarilly was the fully truth.
I wasn't happy all the time, neither was my husband. We had our fair share of shit, and like so many other couples we struggled with real experiences of life taking unexpected directions that were not wrapped up in simple endings.
The difference is that we then had each other to lean on to, we then had each other to create new memories with.
We also had each other to smile to, no matter what.
All photos of life before loss are precious reminders of the life I lived, but they also show how much I've lost.