The Year I Divorced Him, I Got Cancer

On Thursday morning, Meg Parker helped me organize the paperwork. Her fingers lingered on the last page.

"Are you sure you don't want to be buried beside your father?" she asked quietly. "I can take care of the arrangements. You don't have to worry about any of it."

I looked at her hand resting on the paper. When I'd signed the week before, she'd sat in that same chair while I confirmed with the donation program exactly how my body would be used. Then she'd signed as my witness.

The program had been clear. My body would be used for anatomy classes and surgical training. But they wouldn't decide whether they could accept it until after I died, based on my condition at the time and my medical history.

I knew what my signature meant. I'd also set money aside for a standard cremation in case the donation wasn't approved.

"If my body can help someone else learn, I'm willing," I said. "Follow the instructions in the papers. There's no need to bring my ashes back."

Meg kept her hand on the stack. I reached for the glass at the edge of the table, but my fingers slipped. It slid across the tablecloth and teetered at the edge. She caught it and handed me a squat mug with a handle instead. I bent my head and took a sip of water.

"You've never been a burden to me," she said suddenly.

My throat closed up. All I could get out was, "I know."

She looked at me, sealed the documents in an envelope, and locked them in a drawer. As I set down my cup, I turned away to hide my tears. I waited until I'd composed myself before asking what time we should leave.

I was 32. It had been 18 months since my colon cancer diagnosis.

The surgery had left me with a permanent stoma, an opening in my abdomen through which waste passed into an ostomy pouch. At first, I couldn't bear to look at the wound. Whenever the supplies needed changing, I kept my head turned away. The nurse would wait patiently until I was ready, then show me how to do it again.

Later, I learned to manage it on my own and went back to work for a while. I carried a full set of spare supplies whenever I went out, chose loose clothes, and always found the restroom as soon as I arrived somewhere unfamiliar. I thought that if I did all of that, life could go on.

But the cancer didn't stop spreading.

A little over four months earlier, I'd finished my last round of intravenous chemotherapy. After that, I no longer had the strength to work. My home care nurse, Rebecca Foster, and my doctor, Daniel Morgan, visited regularly to help manage my cancer pain. Meg made time to be with me whenever she could.

Everyone was trying to help, but I'd begun to dread the gentle voice outside the bathroom door asking, "Do you need any help?"

I used to support my father with one arm and change his clothes with the other. Now I needed so many breaks just to wash my hair that the bathwater went cold before I finished.

Ethan knew nothing about any of it.

After the divorce, we stayed in the same small town, and neither of us changed our phone number. He contacted me a few times, sometimes about an old bill, sometimes just to text me something cold like, "I still haven't signed the divorce papers. How long are you going to keep this up?"

At first, I tried to explain. I kept bringing up the pain my father's death had left me with. I wasn't trying to settle a score. But he never listened for long before asking whether he had to feel guilty about one remark for the rest of his life.

We loved each other. But because of them, my father had been sent away to live alone. We hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye before he died.

Eventually, all he ever texted was, "Come back when you've thought it through." I rarely replied.

The day I got the diagnosis, I stood in the hospital corridor, pulled up his number, and held my finger over the call button without pressing it. I turned off the screen, folded the report, and put it back at the bottom of my bag.

The week before, he'd told me the inn was changing hands, with the handover scheduled for the following Thursday. He wanted me to collect the belongings I'd left there. I told him I only wanted the wooden chair my father had made.

Early that afternoon, when the car reached the street corner, I asked Meg to stop.

"I'll go in myself. Wait for me here."

I opened the car door, got to my feet, and steadied myself before walking slowly toward the inn. Its wooden door was as heavy as ever. I had pushed it halfway open when a gust of wind caught it and sent the bell jangling.

The lobby was full of packing boxes. Our wedding photo was gone from the wall. Ethan straightened up behind the counter with an inventory sheet still in his hand.

He had lost a lot of weight. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and a box had left a red scrape on the back of his hand. The way he held his pen and the way he frowned without thinking at the sound of the doorbell hadn't changed at all. Yet standing in front of him, I couldn't find the words.

"Claire?" He came out from behind the counter, his eyes on my face.

"How did you get so thin? Have you been eating enough?"

"I don't eat much." I pulled the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder. "Is the wooden chair still here?"

He glanced toward the stairs. "Go up and have a look first. The sheets were changed a few days ago. I never put away those two cups by the window."

Our old bedroom was upstairs. In the busy season, we used to work until the small hours, and just the sight of these stairs meant that once the last few tables were cleared, I could go up and lie down.

I gripped the railing and put one foot on the first step. The old wood creaked softly. My legs were already weak.

"I won't go upstairs today."

Ethan was on the second step. He turned around. "You won't even look at it? Do you really hate me that much?"

I lowered my foot to the floor and pressed my palm hard against the railing while I waited for my breathing to steady.

"I came for the chair. I'll go as soon as I have it."

He looked at my hand braced against the railing. Then he came downstairs and moved the boxes by the wall, revealing my father's chair. The crooked groove in its back was still clearly visible.

Nine years earlier, I worked the late shift at a restaurant and kept missing the last bus. Ethan would leave the inn's kitchen door unlocked so I could come in for a bowl of hot soup. Then he'd walk me to the corner to wait for my father to pick me up.

He never rushed me then. The soup was hot and I drank it slowly, so he would push his empty bowl aside and sit across from me, listening to me complain about difficult customers.

After we married, my father built that chair for us. When the last screw wouldn't tighten, Ethan lay on the floor and steadied the chair leg with one hand. With the other, he took the tool my father offered and patiently finished the job.

"When the two of you are old, don't tell me the chair wasn't built well." My father stood there pretending to measure it.

Ethan looked up and laughed. "You sit in it first. Sit in it until you want a new one."

After my father's stroke, he did spend a lot of time in that chair.

Ethan was good to him in the beginning. The steps were hard for him, so Ethan would carry him outside and wait while I brought the wheelchair around. When he wet the bed at night, Ethan helped change the sheets.

I still remembered my father's bowed head and his repeated, embarrassed apologies for being a burden. Ethan would gather up the dirty sheets, then tuck the blanket around him.

"You haven't done anything wrong by getting sick. You don't have to apologize to me. You're my wife's father. You're my father too."

Standing outside the door, I felt tears sting my eyes.

Back in the present, I tried to lift the chair. I'd barely moved it when a sharp pain shot through my abdomen and my strength gave out. One of the chair legs hit the floor hard. Ethan hurried over and caught it, his other hand instinctively reaching for my waist. I twisted away, leaving his hand suspended between us.

"I was only going to help you."

"I'm sorry." I held my hem down. "But don't touch me there."

He withdrew his hand and steadied the chair. His voice softened. "Is someone looking after you?"

"Meg is."

"Did she bring you here?"

I nodded. He looked outside, but Meg's car was out of sight. The concern on his face slowly turned to coldness.

"See? It's been two years since you left, and you still rely on other people for everything."

I tightened my grip on the strap. When Meg had helped me put on my shoes that morning, I'd felt just as helpless, needing someone for every little thing. But hearing Ethan say it still made my chest ache.

After a moment, I told him Meg could borrow a larger car on Saturday, so the chair would have to stay another two days.

"All right." He pushed the chair back against the wall. "There's a farewell dinner at the inn tomorrow night. Come."

"I may not be able to."

"They're your old coworkers. Why wouldn't you be able to come?" He watched my face. "Plenty of them still ask why you left the way you did and cut off your old friends along with everything else."

I looked up at him. "Before the divorce, you and I talked about all of it many times."

"We talked." He put the inventory sheet back on the counter. "You never once admitted that any part of it was your fault."

It was still daylight, but the lamp outside the door was on.

When my father could still make it downstairs, I would wheel him out for some air at night. That small light always welcomed us back. On the day we divorced, Ethan stood beneath it and told me it would never go out as long as I was willing to come home.

My phone buzzed in my bag. Meg had texted to ask if she should come in and get me. I told her no, but my fingers lingered on the screen. Finally, I put the phone away and faced Ethan again.

"Are you free on Saturday?"

Ethan said nothing.

"Would you make fish soup for me?" I worked to keep my voice level. "Just the two of us. One quiet meal."

He tapped his fingers against the edge of the counter, then stopped.

"Come to the dinner tomorrow first. Everyone wants to talk to you."

I wanted to ask whether, for just one meal, he could stop pushing me to apologize. But he'd already picked up the sheet again and was reminding me what time to be there. All I could do was nod and say yes.

I kept one hand on the wall as I walked from the inn to the street corner, stopping twice to rest. The second time, I couldn't help looking back. He was still behind the counter. He hadn't taken a single step outside.

As we were leaving, I told Meg I had made plans to eat with him.

Meg had her hand on the door handle. She saw how pale I was and said nothing at all.

"I can't eat much," I said. "But I want to watch him eat a proper meal one more time."

Tears pricked my eyes. I had so little time left, so few chances to talk to him. I couldn't bear to let him go, but holding on wouldn't change anything.

She leaned in to fasten my seat belt and laid her hand over mine as I gripped the strap.

"I'll drive you when it's time. Call me if you need anything."