I love weddings (almost obsessively so) and am thrilled for anyone who is currently engaged. But, sometimes it is damn hard dealing with wedding planning season when you’ve got cancer or a chronic illness.
Being single with cancer and no date at my brother’s wedding was hard. I was in the midst of breaking up with a guy who couldn’t say the word “cancer”. I was so happy for my brother and didn’t want to feel like a self-pitying sister or that I was detracting from his moment. I tried to keep my mouth shut about it all. I also dreaded all of the guests telling me how grrrreat I looked in that wacko-cancer-pity-adoration way. But for all of my angst leading up to it, I decided to go totally solo, not even bring a friend date and it was the most fun wedding I’ve been to.
When it rolled around to my own wedding a few years later, I thought hard about whether at I would thank the people in my life who have been there for me during “hard times” (code words for “cancer”.) I decided to thank people for other things, that cancer didn’t belong at my wedding. But sometimes it isn’t possible to compartmentalize life like that; life just bleeds on through. It’s challenging to hide baldness at a wedding or scars decorating your body. And you can’t hide your absence at a wedding because you were too sick to go.
It’s hard to transition from staring death in the face to embracing unlimited love. Take for example Dana, a leukemia patient in my book Everything Changes, who said: “At my rehearsal dinner, I went into a bathroom stall and sobbed my eyes out. I could not believe I was at my own rehearsal dinner after everything that I went through. My friend came into the stall and sat with me. I just needed her to be there while I got it all out. It was like I suppressed all of these feelings because they were too big for my brain. It was like, ‘Look at where I’m at, I’m alive, I’ve met this man.’ I had to let them out.”
Wedding budgets, gifts, puking on your bouquet. As a bride, groom, member of the wedding, or just a guest, what are some of the challenges that you’ve faced because of your illness? Do you have any weddings coming up this year?
“Everything Changes is, without doubt, the most forthright, emotionally sophisticated, and plain-old valuable book of its kind I've seen.”
