Dear 23-year-old Jennifer,
About now, you are wondering how things could possibly be going so right and so wrong at the same time. You've just been offered a job at a market research company, using your degree finally after three temporary jobs. You are going to start in a career that is something you sort of thought about, but had no idea how to even get into. It sounds so perfect!
Only, you've also just been told your young husband has cancer.
And you are both a day's drive away from any family, and just starting to make friends in metro Detroit. Darrell is sick. Really, he hasn't been feeling well for months and months, but now you know why. All of his energy is going to be used up fighting this, and you are wondering how you can get him through it and be a good employee at the same time.
In the back of your mind, you are wondering what you will do if he dies. And 23-year-olds shouldn't have to think about that, but many do. The chances are in your favor that he will live. And I can tell you that he does, and has only minor lingering effects from the chemo and radiation that saves his life.
But you don't know that now. And I know you have another big worry. What if you can't have kids? It will be another three long years before you even know whether you can. The odds don't look good right now. Even the doctor's last-minute switch of chemo drugs doesn't leave you feeling very optimistic. But you are encouraged that your young husband is willing to go to a sperm bank, even though he claims that he'd be happy adopting a child pictured on the fast food restaurant place mats.
Will you love this man forever if you can't have kids? I like to think that you would have, but I can't resist telling you that you won't have to find out.
I won't try to tell you that the next year will be easy, nor the following few years of wondering. First, you both need your strength to focus on beating cancer. Family and friends will help, in ways you can't even imagine now. You will learn through this that your love is strong. You will look back and wonder if this early challenge was a sort of cement that kept you together through lesser challenges later.
I mean, if you can get through a life-threatening disease, surely you can stick by his side when he yells and gets angry when he shouldn't. Surely you can learn how to care for a little baby together. What, after all, is tougher than watching your husband lose nearly 50 pounds, lose much of his hair, get sick over and over and over again, cry because he thinks he might die and leave you alone, sweat through the sheets almost every night, get a lung disease that doctors can't even identify, go to work every day and leave him feeling awful, watch him try to go to work when possible so that life is just a little more normal and so his work disability payments don't drop to a lower level...
There will be other tough things that happen in your life, but getting through this will be a big part of what makes you and Darrell believe you can survive anything together.
It takes an average of six months to conceive, or so you read before you start trying. I'm tempted to let you wonder how long it will take for you and Darrell to conceive your first baby (yes, I said first). The truth is that I'm not exactly sure anyway, because you weren't even all that serious about the trying yet. But it was definitely within the first month. And, ever since, you are happy to be able to laugh and smile when Darrell complains about not getting the six months of "practice" that he was promised.
I can't resist a tiny preview for you (and look how much hair Darrell will have again!):
You get through the tough times one day at a time, with prayer and by just doing what you can. You will continue to be a wife for a long time. You will be a mom. You will even be a good employee. I keep telling you that the best is yet to come, and it is!
Love,
42-year-old Jennifer
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