Anyone who knows me will tell you I have gone through my fair share of hard times in my short thirty-two years on this planet. I would have to say the hardest of those times was losing my husband to a terrible disease that no one should ever have to suffer from or watch someone else endure: the big C—cancer.
I’ll never forget the day we got the diagnosis. My husband was trying so hard to be strong and pretend there was nothing wrong, or maybe he was in denial about his illness. We had a five-month-old son who needed his father and we were planning a wedding. All I could think was,
What are we going to do when he’s gone?
The day came when I needed to figure everything out because cancer does not care about our timetable; it has a beastly one of its own. We made his last year and a half on Earth the happiest it could have been, but now he is gone and I’m falling apart. I had this very confused toddler, a week shy of his second birthday, and I had to figure out how to muscle through this deep depression. I had to keep reminding myself that my son needed me more than ever and during this, I realized that it was actually me who needed him.
I had an amazing support system in my friends and family. None of them even lived in the same state as I did, but they were there for me when I needed them the most. My husband died on a Friday morning at a hospital near where we lived in South Carolina. My best friend, still living in my home state of Connecticut, stayed on the phone with me all day and almost all night just to make sure I was okay.
My sister, who lived an eight-hour drive away, was at my house not even twelve hours later. She spent the weekend with my son and me, and by the end of it, I decided I was going back to Tennessee with her to be with my family. I was in a tailspin and everything was happening so fast. Maybe it was for the best but that was just the beginning.
At this point, I was working as a freelance writer for a site where I wrote celebrity news stories and television show recaps. It was enough money to make ends meet, but I needed more. After all, I had a toddler who was growing out of clothes faster than I could buy them and I needed to find a place to live.
I decided that moving back home to Connecticut was the best thing for my son and me. While I had some family in Tennessee, most of my friends and family were up north, where I primarily resided until the birth of my son. I knew going back home would make this transition as easy as it could be, under the heart-wrenching circumstances.
Sure enough, I had a full-time job within the first week and was still freelancing as well. I actually managed to pick up two more writing jobs in the process. A good friend of mine agreed to help me with childcare because daycare wasn’t an option. Who would have thought daycare would be so expensive?! You have to work two jobs just to pay for it, while not sacrificing the precious moments of watching my baby grow into this little human, a clone of his late father.
Getting back into the workforce and out of my head kept me distracted and I reconnected with a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in years. Life wasn’t easy, but as long as my son had everything he needed and was happy, that’s all that mattered. If it weren’t for my amazing support system helping my son and me, I would have still been aimlessly trying to glue together the pieces of my shattered life.
I was able to rebuild my life by reminding myself what was most important: my son; we are each other’s anchors; my family, who gave me a place to stay until I got back on my feet; and my friends, who kept me mentally stable throughout the process. Here I am, more than four years later, doing what I love the most with the people who love me the most. Life is good.