Bereft

In the fall of 2001, in the midst of our first go-round with breast cancer, this was still a household of six: Zach and me, plus the family of four cats that had been with us, at that point, for 10 years.

The matriarch of the family, a gorgeous Siamese named Brittany, came to us with a daughter, whom we called Normandy. (We had gone on a big trip to France the year before.) Brit, in a surprise development, also turned out to be pregnant upon her arrival, and soon had three more kittens, of which we ended up keeping two: Bistro and D'Artagnan. All of this happened before Zach and I were living together, and while they began as his cats, it was clear that, before long, they'd be ours.

Zach and Brit had a particularly close relationship. Once he found out that she was pregnant, he made all of the appropriate preparations, including putting together a whelping box for her in his bedroom. She ignored it for weeks.

Then, one night, she climbed in. She started meowing, loudly, in a way only a Siamese could, and Zach began stroking her fur to soothe her. This went on for a long time. Long enough that Zach started to doze off, more than once.

Each time his eyes closed, and his hand stopped moving across her body, Brit would let out a meow that jolted him back awake, back to his midwifing duties. He comforted her throughout the night, until the last kitten was born, and watched as she licked the three tiny creatures clean. Then, finally, he went back to sleep.

Brit was the Grace Kelly of cats: beautiful, demure, slender, and effortlessly regal, even without a Rainier of her own to make it official. She was the alpha feline of the house, and we adored her.

A decade after the kittens were born, almost exactly, Zach brought Brit in to see the vet. He had been petting her one day and noticed a bump on her undercarriage.

I don't know where I was that day. I do know that I wasn't with him when he carried her to the vet, nor when he sat in the waiting room while they examined her. But he told me about it later that day. How someone came out from the back and broke the news to him that she, too, had breast cancer.

Up to that point, Zach had been a rock. For eight months, from the moment I told him about the biopsy through the first diagnosis, through all of the consults with all of the doctors, through the mastectomy and the revised diagnosis, through the chemo, the reconstruction, and the radiation treatments, his support and his fierce optimism never flagged. Whatever fears or doubts he had, he held them back, held them in tight, buried them so deep that I saw nothing but love and determination in his eyes, heard nothing but confidence and strength in his voice.

But when he heard about Brit, Zach lost it. Every emotion he had been suppressing came surging out, a torrent of pent-up grief and anger and worry and dread.

The poor veterinarian could not have known how combustible Zach's psyche was that day, how emotionally exhausted he was after so many months in the cancer trenches with me. How unprepared and ill equipped he was to hear even one more piece of bad news, let alone devastating news, let alone this devastating news all over again.

Six weeks ago, that story came rushing back to me in my own emotional-dam-bursting moment.

I had gone in to see MOSWO (my oh-so-wonderful oncologist) for a routine check-up before a scheduled Herceptin treatment. He had recently "graduated" me to seeing him only every nine weeks, so we had some catching up to do. In my case, that mostly meant updating him on how my dad was doing, telling him about the saga of the last couple of months. I also told him about getting ready to return to school the following month, about how Zach was doing out in L.A., and about the state of our house in Phoenicia.

I think all of MOSWO's patients adore him. He's the closest thing to a 21st-century Marcus Welby that you are likely to find on this planet—an excellent physician, yes, but also an exceptional human being.

Among all of his patients, though, I think I may be his greatest fan. It doesn't hurt that we have a lot in common, including houses in the country, a love of the theater, and a worldview that values people and feelings over power and money. We're also contemporaries, which provides an easy cultural shorthand for our conversations. And he and Zach are great pals. If, in that alternate universe of which I'm so fond, I'd met him in college or at a cocktail party or on a vacation somewhere, I have no doubt that we'd have become lifelong friends.

Instead, I met him in a hospital, and we became partners of an entirely different kind.

I was devoted to him from the start. When MOSWO told me, a few months after we'd met, that he'd be moving from that hospital to a different cancer center, I barely let him finish the sentence. He had started to lay out all of my options, but I didn't need to hear them.

"Is one of them going with you?" was all I wanted to know.

It was, and I did.

Since that time, he has seen me through a lot—more than he or I ever could have anticipated. I think my re-diagnosis was almost as difficult for him as it was for Zach and my family and me. There is no one else who could have guided us through it the way he did.

So when he sat me down six weeks ago to tell me that he was leaving the cancer center, I expected a reprise of the conversation we'd had five and a half years before. He'd start to tell me my options, and I'd cut him off and volunteer to follow him wherever he was planning to go.

When he told me that he was leaving practice altogether, that he was going to work on behalf of cancer patients in poor countries, that I would need to work with another oncologist, suddenly I was Zach in that waiting room at the vet's office five years ago. This façade, this emotional house of cards I'd been keeping up for the past few hyper-stressful months, just collapsed. The weight of my dad's illness, of Zach's absence, of the pressures of returning to school, the pain in my joints, the abject exhaustion I'd been feeling, the endless work on the house in Phoenicia, the medical bills to be paid, the insurance claims to be filed, and everything else with which life had been pummeling me—all of that rushed to the fore. I could take all of that, it seemed, but not one thing more. And certainly not this.

I kept it together long enough to finish the conversation and to get dressed and go outside for a bite to eat before my treatment began. But as soon as I was down the cancer center steps, I called Zach, and I just bawled. Into his voicemail, as it happened.

A fog of woe had descended, enveloping me for the next several weeks. My emotions remained raw, refusing to scab over. Most of the time, I felt like a puddle. Finally, a friend explained it to me.

I was in mourning.

And she was absolutely right. MOSWO's departure was a loss, and I was grieving, in a way that I hadn't for my own, more personal losses—of my breast, my ovaries, my fertility. Of all of the time breast cancer had taken from me—past, present, and future. Of the luxury to be careless and carefree. Of my identity.

I am feeling better now. The news has sunk in. School is distracting me. Life is hurtling along.

But I am still in mourning. I know because yesterday was my last Herceptin treatment. And even though Zach flew in for the occasion, even though everyone in the treatment area made a fuss, even though we celebrated by bringing gifts for the nurses who have been taking care of me all year, I could not rejoice.

MOSWO was not there. And I missed him.