Delmarva Review: The End of the Story by Patty Somlo

Author’s Note: After my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I believed I was preparing for his death. “The End of the Story” weaves together this period of caregiving, mixed with fear and love, with my work as a writer, who often has trouble ending stories.

The End of the Story

A NOT FAMOUS WRITER who nevertheless publishes a fair amount, I am sometimes interviewed about writing. One question comes up more often than not. “What is the most difficult thing you find about writing?”

My answer is always the same. “I have trouble finding an ending.”

And so it is with life. Or at least it is with my life in the present moment. The best story of my life recently came crashing to a halt. I’m now stalled in front of a massive concrete wall. At the moment, I don’t see any place I can go. Heading back the way I’ve come is impossible. Going forward, or even to the left or right, won’t work. The only word to describe my situation is stuck.

My husband, partner, friend, and really, everything, has moved on. I wouldn’t say he abandoned me, as that has the ring of intention. In truth, my husband wanted to stay with me forever, far longer than the nearly three decades we were lucky enough to form a twosome. He struggled to live for four and a half years, while cancer fought hard to take him out. If I said cancer won, such words would imply that Richard lost the fight. It’s impossible to imagine anyone gliding over the obstacles this horrid disease put up as gracefully as Richard did, until the end, when he just as gracefully bowed out.

A loved one’s long serious illness can make you believe you’re preparing for when he or she is gone. I thought this, especially since I knew the end of the story. We’d received the first news on an April evening, in a call from Richard’s doctor, following an MRI. My husband had lesions in his spine, probably metastatic tumors, the cause of his persistent back pain and the result of a cancer in its advanced stage. At that point, I feared my husband was going to die right then and there, or at least in the coming week. As the story I’ve partially revealed makes clear, he survived. For four and a half years, he continued to live. Yet for four and a half years, I knew how the story would end. I just didn’t know when.

I am not an optimistic person. My usual thinking borders on the hopeless and bleak. If I were a character in a famous novel, I would be Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Like Mrs. Bennett, I almost daily need to tend to my nerves. As also happens to my literary double, a small bit of bad news can throw me into a tizzy. Worse news, such as a stage four cancer diagnosis, turns me into a sobbing mess.

Surprising to me, I did not take to my bed for four and a half years, as Mrs. Bennett would have done under the circumstances. I was Richard’s sole caregiver, which meant I had no choice. He was the person I loved most in the world, devoting himself to staying alive. That made me a partner in this race, in which we did everything possible to outrun cancer cells trying to overtake the healthy ones left.

A pattern emerged as Richard and I traveled the road of his illness. Some crisis would appear—a fracture in his spine, intense digestive issues, cancer moving to his brain—and I would sink way down. Not only could I imagine the worst, but I also let him know this terrible fate was on the horizon. But in a few hours or a day, I would unearth some slender thread of hope and follow it to a place that hadn’t existed for me before.

I went on as if reading a novel in which we’re told in the first chapter that the main character is soon going to die. In preparation, I did all the practical things. Like most married couples, Richard and I split household and other chores, each handling what we liked and were good at. Gradually, I convinced Richard to let me do things he’d always handled, such as paying bills. As time went on, he took it upon himself to teach me what I didn’t already know—how to open the safe or where he kept his passwords.

I understood that I probably couldn’t prepare for the emotional trauma the loss of my husband would cause. But at least I would be ready to take over the mundane everyday tasks.

Still, as his condition worsened and we feared the every-three-weeks treatment wasn’t working as well and one day would not, I imagined I was getting ready. He slept a lot, appearing for breakfast, and then returning to bed. Weeks wore on, and he started to sleep even more. Alone much of the time, I thought, Well, this is what it will be like when Richard is gone.

Earlier in my life, stories seemed to emerge nearly whole. Tales I wrote were short, two thousand words, no more, and came out of me like I imagined an infant would, if I’d ever had children. In those days, I didn’t search for endings. They arrived naturally, as if the story could end no other way.

Two years into my husband’s illness, when COVID shuttered everything in our small city, for the first time I found myself writing longer stories. Many days, I searched without luck to find resolutions to those tales. It was as if the unchecked malignant cells in Richard’s body and the Coronavirus spreading everywhere had seeped into my pen.

At the same time, I spent hours each day alone with my thoughts, worrying about the latest crisis or concerning symptom that might only be a side effect but also a sign of the impending end. Over and over again, I calculated how many more weeks or months Richard might live. I worried and worried and worried, and then would try tricking my doomsday mind with a bit of mindfulness, reminding myself that what would happen was out of my hands and worrying wouldn’t change that.

Every writer has heard one piece of advice—Write what you know. Since my beginnings as a creative writer after a decade as a fact-writing journalist, I have written about what I want to know. In other words, I write to learn. Beforehand, I don’t know the characters and their stories. I write about them to find out more.

I knew almost nothing about cancer before Richard’s diagnosis. Though I fretted endlessly about his dying and how soon that terrible event would occur, neither Richard nor I cared to ask his oncologist for a prognosis. We chose instead to take each day, week, and month as it would come, to make the most of his time, rather than cross off each day on an abbreviated calendar and see how few days of his life were left.

At the urging of a social worker in palliative care, I joined a caregiver support group, two years into Richard’s cancer treatment. The group met once a week on Zoom. Monday mornings, I stared at all these strangers’ heads and listened to their voices, frequently relating truly terrible ordeals. The worst stories came from people caring for loved ones close to death. There was talk of twenty-four-hour care by husbands, wives, and children not trained to be doctors, nurses, or nursing home aides, yet suddenly thrust into those roles. One wife hadn’t left her bed for two years, having been in hospice all that time. Another partner needed more oxygen every day than the provider was willing to supply. The stories were wrenching and frightened me more than I was ready to be that scared. I thought, what a mistake I had made agreeing to join this group. Instead of helping me, I felt far worse when I turned off my laptop at the end of each group.

I’m not sure why, but I hung in there. My reason for doing so might have been because I listened to a voice in my head that said, Eventually, these people will be able to help you.

In addition to outlining horrors at the end of life and the toll that can take on the person doing most of the caregiving, members of the group offered resources, easier ways to do this or that, along with helpful products. They shared the adoration they felt for their patients. Most important, they let me know that more than anything, love would power me through the hardest times.

I started to see the end of the story in the caregiving group, though I still didn’t know how or exactly when my story with Richard would end. Group members were caring for loved ones with a variety of serious illnesses, but most who had died were suffering from stage four cancer. One of the many lessons I learned about a life ending from cancer was that the last days often arrive without warning, as if someone snuck in and suddenly flicked the switch from on to off.

As much as I feared this shift happening to Richard, I couldn’t help seeing it in every new crisis. An MRI done on his neck after he injured his shoulder and arm trying to lift a heavy weight, what he used to do easily at the gym before cancer robbed him of energy and strength, showed a tumor at the base of his brain. The next day a subsequent MRI of the brain revealed two more. This is it, I thought, before learning that targeted radiation could destroy the DNA in those cancer cells without a bit of damage to the surrounding healthy tissue.

Six months later, Richard suddenly started speaking in nonexistent words. I panicked, asked him what was wrong, and when he couldn’t tell me, I called 9-1-1. In seconds, burly firefighters and paramedics crowded into the hall of our small ranch house, checking out my poor confused husband, while shooting rapid-fire questions at me. As I waited to see Richard in the emergency room, I kept thinking, This is it. Finally able to go to his room, I was relieved to find that he could speak normally again. The doctors had no idea of the cause for what they labeled temporary aphasia.

A few weeks later, following a more precise series of MRIs, we learned Richard had even more brain tumors. And yes, I assumed this was where he would now take the rapid turn, hurtling him to his final destination. But once again, I was wrong.

As a prolific writer of short fiction, I’ve learned the essential technique of foreshadowing. Because I almost always write to discover the story, rather than plotting the tale ahead of time, I often need to go back and add hints of what I know is to come when the piece concludes. Looking back on the progression of Richard’s illness, I can see that, yes, the appearance of the first brain tumor was one of many signs in his final year foreshadowing the end coming not far behind.

Yet we held on to hope. In the three and a half years before brain tumors were discovered, every seemingly life-ending crisis had resolved. With the second appearance of even more brain tumors, the kind, excessively smart and cheerful radiation oncologist assured us following the treatment that he’d gotten every single one.

Yet, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Richard’s condition was worsening. Numbers that used to go down on his tests following chemo were climbing to levels we had never seen. Also rising was his pain, prompting the need for more and more medication. His weight, on the other hand, was dropping, even at times when his appetite reappeared, and he ate more. He was also sleeping a good part of the day, eventually spending more time asleep than awake.

If I had been writing a story of someone dying from cancer, I might have realized the ominous changes signaled the end was near. In real life, though, people are complicated. Richard wanted to stay alive. He also used every ounce of his diminishing energy to hold onto some semblance of a life. A landscape photographer who loved traveling to beautiful places in nature, whether on day trips or longer stays, he still found ways to use one of his many cameras to make memorable prints. Every so often, he would muster up the energy to take a walk with me around the neighborhood, his camera tripod doubling as a walking stick. Some afternoons, he only had enough strength to step out to the backyard, photographing our delicate old roses, then making prints inside, even matting, framing, and hanging them on the wall.

The life Richard gripped so fiercely helped me push the end of his story further into the future. Many days I would remind myself of how long the spouses of other caregivers survived after entering hospice. Since Richard hadn’t moved into that end-of-life care, I assumed he would go on that same amount of time.

We knew, though, that whatever time he had left was growing shorter. As his energy diminished more and more, the one place left where he had the strength to venture out was the backyard.

Without any planning, Richard and I started a daily ritual of coming together in the late afternoon outside. We each sat in one of the black wicker chairs set beneath the fig tree. By this time, Richard’s bones were destroyed from the cancer that had found a home there early on, which made sitting hard. To ease the discomfort, he would place an oversized cushion down on his chair.

In our meetings under the fig tree, we began, without prior agreement, to prepare for the end of the story. Each day, one or the other of us would start. Initially, we spent those precious afternoons reminiscing about the wonderful life we’d shared, mostly recalling favorite trips and hours spent outdoors.

The look back on our life turned out to be the prelude. Before long, we eased into talk of what would happen when Richard was gone. More than once, he asked if I would be all right. Each time, I assured him that though I’d relied on him in our years together, I could manage on my own. That did not mean, I made clear, I wouldn’t be sad and miss him forever, which I would.

We next eased into Richard’s future, which, as we agreed, was far more uncertain. He admitted to being afraid, mostly of what would happen before he died. He worried most about the pain of dying, and that no amount of medication would ease it.

And of course, he feared what would happen after death. I told him again and again that I believed he would be in a better place, where the pain and all the terrible side effects had finally vanished.

On a sunny and warm fall morning, Richard died. In the days before he took his last breath and his heart stopped, he seemed to move on, barely getting out of bed, as if he realized life as he’d known it was done. The end of the story I’d dreaded for four and a half years had come, and sorrow washed over me, an enormous wave under which I felt I might drown. Worst of all, the man who had comforted me through so many hard times was now gone.

If ghosts exist, since Richard’s death I have acquired one. He is friendly, like Casper, who I adored as a child. I hear him around midnight in the hall and assume, like Richard, he is walking to the kitchen, where he’ll grab a ripe banana from the basket I keep on the top shelf.

My ghost hovers over the bed where Richard spent so many hours in his final months. This friendly spirit lets me talk to Richard and cry, letting him know I’m sad, but I’m also doing all right.

The ghost and these early days of widowhood have taught me one thing. When it comes to a great love, there is no end to the story.

Isn’t that, I ask myself, what Jane Austen taught us in Pride and Prejudice? Even after Elizabeth Bennett made it clear to Mr. Darcy that she would rather swallow sharp knives than marry him, he couldn’t give her up, no matter how hard he tried.

So today I will walk to the backyard and take my place on the black wicker chair to the left of the small matching side table. I will turn my chair slightly to face Richard’s chair and the towering redwood tree in my neighbor’s yard. In those moments, I will contemplate the upcoming chapters of my life, which has always been unpredictable, in both its high points and times when the road has headed decidedly down.

♦

Patty Somlo, from California, has published four books and three short story collections. She has won numerous writing awards including a Notable selection for Best American Essays, several nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her books include: Hairway to Heaven Stories, The First to Disappear, and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace. Somlo was a reporter before focusing on literary fiction and creative nonfiction.

The Delmarva Review has published annually from St. Michaels, Maryland for sixteen years. Its editors have selected the most compelling new creative nonfiction, poetry. and short stories from thousands of submissions nationwide (and beyond) for publication in print, with an electronic edition. At a time when many commercial and literary magazines have closed their doors or reduced literary content, the Review stands out to help fill the void in print. Selection has always been based on writing quality. Almost half of the writers have come from the greater Chesapeake-Delmarva region. As an independent literary publication, it has never charged writers a reading or publishing fee. The Delmarva Review is available worldwide from Amazon, other online booksellers, and specialty regional bookstores. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org