We are secrets to each other
Each one’s life a novel
No one else has read.
Even joined in the bonds of love
We’re linked to one another
By such slender threads.
Amy was freakishly gifted at wordplay, automatically and almost involuntarily seeing letters within words that formed other words. She saw an Exit sign and thought how nice it would be to have it read “Excite” instead. She thought “creation” was a stimulating, active, valuable time investment, as opposed to “reaction,” which contains exactly the same letters and implies letting other people dictate how you’re going to spend your life. The rest of us Rosenthals kept trying to pick up the skill, but even when it was staring us right in the face, we couldn’t hold a candle to her.
But how much would we have given for her diagnosis to have been acne, tucked neatly into cancer, this abhorrent new word in our vocabulary?
We immediately reached out to our considerable network to get the names of the best and the brightest oncology surgeons in the country. It turned out that two of them were right here in Chicago. We went to an appointment with the first of them on September 8, 2015, when the phrase “suspicious for metastasis” (aka “the cancer appears to be spreading”) entered our vernacular.
Our second appointment was with the renowned Ernst Lengyel, MD, PhD, an expert in ovarian, cervical, and endometrial cancers, which was where our journey began in Ernst (I try, Amy). We went to see Dr. Lengyel on September 11, 2015, at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, which soon become our new home away from home.
Surgery was scheduled just a few days later, on September 16, 2015. It was time to start notifying children and family, but that came with its own set of baffling questions—most notably, just how exactly were we supposed to give people this news out of nowhere? Of course, Amy and I hadn’t been prepared either, but at least we’d been in the room(s) as the awful events unfolded and had had a chance to start processing them, together. Picking up the phone and calling with terrible news just felt so daunting.
Still, it’s not until you’re tested by life like this that you truly understand what it means to have a family that supports you no matter what. In addition to her exceptional parents, Amy’s siblings were critical pieces of our lives. By this point, all three of her siblings had married people who were spectacular in their own right. Adding to the embarrassment of riches, there are twelve cousins (and some stepcousins) in the family, all of whom are connected to us and each other like (to stay with the medical theme) vertebrae. On my side, my sister Michel, who also lives in Chicago, is brilliant, creative, and loyal to me, Amy, and her nieces and nephews. My brother Tony—from my dad’s second marriage but truly my brother—and his wife manage to stay very connected and generous to Amy, me, and our children from their home in New York. Our parents are different but incredibly alike, in that they each adored their offsprings’ choices of mates so much that they considered Amy and me to be their very own kids.
We made it through those calls somehow, and of course received nothing but love and support and the reassurance that we were all in this together. Then we took a moment to brace ourselves for what was coming next.
There are a few challenges in life that seem unbearable, but is there one more daunting than having to tell our children that their mother has ovarian cancer? Even as I write that, I’m aware of how shortsighted it is. Men and women much braver than I risk their lives every day in defense of this country, and some of them never make it home. Jerry Sittser, author of the beautiful memoir A Grace Disguised, suffered a challenge when three generations of his family died instantly in a car crash. Even so, there was still no way around it—picking up the phone that day, and hiding my dread from Amy as best I could so she wouldn’t have the added burden of comforting me, was the toughest test I ever thought I’d be faced with in my privileged lifetime.
We set up a conference call for all of us, kept our voices calm and confident, and filled them in on everything, from their mom’s diagnosis to as many details as we knew about her upcoming surgery.
They were amazing—shocked, of course, and sad, and frightened, and completely thrown; but during our time with them on the phone, their end of the conversation pretty much boiled down to “You’ll do great, Mom,” and “How can we help?” and “Don’t worry about us.”
Amy was selfless in the call, focused (not for the last time) on how much she hated her illness causing any disruption in our children’s young lives.
After we received the diagnosis, we became a cancer family forever. Amy went to work. It was never a battle, as some people describe it. She hated that analogy. This was not a game. It was not a war. Amy was a lover and a fighter, but in a methodical way. Of course, she made a list of all of the things we had to do over the next few days before surgery. Amy’s overall attitude was one of taking care of business. She never displayed any self-pity for her predicament. “Why me?” was never part of her emotional state. Emotions were for later. Now it was all focus, drive, and determination.
For my part, it’s interesting to look back on what was going on in my head at that time. I was just sad, not for myself (at least not yet) but for the depth of the pain that was being unavoidably inflicted on our kids. I wished there were a way for me to gather up all their pain and take it on myself. I would have done it in a heartbeat.
And yet as I moved beyond their pain, I found myself stuck between two different outlooks. On one hand, even though it still wasn’t clear whether Amy’s cancer was ovarian or fallopian, it was painfully clear how serious it was. It devastated, terrified, and overwhelmed me. It made me angry, and it made me feel impotent—my wife was in the worst trouble of her life, and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
On the other hand, as I lay in bed wide awake the night before surgery, I remember being completely sanguine about the outcome. This wasn’t just anyone who was being operated on the next day; this was Amy. Amy Krouse Rosenthal. No way would this woman who’d dedicated her life to goodness be stolen from us. This beautiful soul, the driving force behind an interactive short film project called The Beckoning of Lovely, had too much good to share and too much left to do to leave this earth unfinished. This bighearted, selfless lady, whose legacy color is yellow, the color of happiness, glory, and wisdom; this daughter who respected and admired her parents and in-laws; this revered sibling, this cherished wife, would not possibly be taken and leave such intense sorrow behind. No way. This woman, the perfect parent who adored her children, could not leave me to do it all alone.
My other half could not be taken. Without her, I’d be half the man I used to be.