If I should Lose Her

 
Peggy, and her friends Elaine and Shirley, recently took their 33rd annual four-day vacation. I used to enjoy having the house to myself, but I now have to hold her tightly for fear that death will take her. My time alone put me in touch with the fact that, if she were dead, I would always be alone, and I knew I could not bear it. The cats also missed her, and our most sensitive cat, Ollie, even lost hair on his face and ears.

Peggy is sick for most of each day, so I’ve tried to be her warrior; her fortress; and her lion at her gate; since May of 2025, when she was told it would be reasonable to refuse treatment and await death by Christmas. She instead chose to fight, but despite being a nurse and despite the horror stories about the devastation wrought by chemo, no one can know what it’s like except through experience or, to some extent, by watching it ravage a loved one. Fortunately, chemo, radiation, and two major surgeries kept her alive long enough to get daraxonrasib, the new drug for pancreatic cancer.

Daraxonrasib has dropped Peggy’s CA-19-9 cancer marker from 7,700 to 175, and she is confident that it will cure her. Because I trust her instincts; because her cancer has been atypical; and because the best test for a new drug occurs when it hits the market; I want to believe she’s right. Yet statistics suggest that it will stop working in less than a year, and she has now been on it for five months. 

Her oncologist insists that we make the most of our time together, and maybe he could do so, but I live in terror by day and terror by night. Her four day absence surpassed the worst times of my life because the quietness of the house was a taste of how my life will be for as long as I live if she dies. While she was away, I talked to no one; I spent fourteen hours a day in bed; and when I looked for solace in my most precious possessions (my entire bedroom is a shrine), I found only emptiness. I was beyond soothing words, and there was no one there whom I trusted to see me at my worst anyway, although I very much wanted someone to hug me long and hard. I survived by reminding myself that she would soon return, but this meant that I couldn’t survive if she were gone forever. Without her, I will have no one with whom to share the deepest depths of my grief aside from a friend in England and a friend in Australia, and those friends are incredibly far away. 

I’m told that it’s hard for men my age to form intimacy with other men, but because the few men I know seem okay, I wonder if the problem isn’t with me. I have never known complete loneliness, but if Peggy dies, the people in my life will consist of three priests; two friends on distant continents; a very few local friends; and four cats. I love my cats exceedingly, and they appear to love me, yet my inability to separate what they understand about me from what they don’t understand limits the good they could do.

Six or eight people from church used to come here when invited, but they never inquired about us afterwards or invited us into their homes. When I consult a doctor, a dentist, or possibly a priest, it is understood that the concern is one-sided and might end when the consultation ends, but when the people from church didn’t show reciprocity, I concluded that they didn’t regard us as people but as objects of Christian charity, and I resented it.

I was recently saddened to learn that my church sponsored online support group for people who are grieving is about to disband because the grant under which it operated was not renewed. I was very upset by this, but when I wrote an impassioned letter to the Episcopal bishop of Oregon describing the importance of this group, she ignored me.

Just as I am too old to replace a roof—as I did to this house in 1997—I am too old to start a new life. Over 54 of my 77-years have been spent with Peggy. When I mow the yard or dust the furniture, I anticipate her approval. Most of what is good in my life comes from the fact that my life matters to her life. Without her in my life, mowing the yard or dusting the furniture would become futile. What will happen to me when I have no one to watch TV with; to play backgammon with; and to cuddle with each morning? There will be no one who wants to hear about the events of my day, or the cute things the cats did, or what I read last night about my most passionate interest—America’s Civil War. 

I make up love songs to Peggy that I sometimes sing for hours a day, but without her to sometimes listen, my voice would grow silent. I have always been prone to depression, yet I never imagined that I could be as sad as I am now; or that the sadness would linger for months and months and months; or that what awaits me might be far worse than what I’ve already endured. I might as well dwell in the cold and silent darkness of a cave than to live without Peggy in the home that we created. If she dies, my desire to live will also die. I know that I will have to find a way to stay alive so that our cats won’t be deprived of a home, but I can’t imagine finding the strength. 

A year and a half of terror has reduced me to perpetual desperation. I am deadened to beauty in a black-and-white world in which all things are overshadowed by death. I can do many things for Peggy, but I cannot mitigate her sadness with my own joie de vivre, and this adds guilt to my sadness.

Peggy is tougher than I. Having fought cancer with courage and dignity, I believe she will face death bravely if it should come to that. We are both very glad to live in a state in which her doctors can—and will—provide her with the means to end her life painlessly, hopefully at home among a few good friends and four devoted cats.