Copyright © 2008 Anthony Waraksa. All rights reserved.

The Baja -- it’s beautiful here.

I'm sitting in my car not far from the cliff’s edge sipping Beefeaters, listening to music, and grieving. None of those lessens the beauty of the sun setting. No, each intensifies it.

The last two years changed everything. My wife developed a brain tumor, a glioblastoma, and we found it too late. One of that tribe of wizards called oncologists told he they might be able to help – when there is no hope anywhere else you take hope wherever you can, even if the "wherever" is a clinical trial.

The cancer was stronger than his brew, the chemo didn’t work. That potent mixture extracted tolls without providing benefits -- "side effects" indeed.

Hair loss was a side effect we were warned about. No one mentioned the worst side effect – that the chemo’s failure would away hope and leave emptiness where once there was love and laughter. Jill’s mirror became our enemy. "Look at these photographs," she said. "I was vivacious then, there was life in my eyes and vigor in my face." She looked at her reflection. "That's all gone now." Her face mapped sadness and stress where there had been beauty and joy. It reflected my wife hiding her sickness under a shawl.

We do irrational things during irrational times – she lost her hair to chemo, and I cut mine off. It was worth it: Jill appreciated my baldness. "I love you for doing that. Your hair will come back but will you save the clippings? If I go, will you promise that they’ll go with me? Will you promise to do that?"

I’d promise her anything.

She was depressed – who wouldn’t be? I don't have many psychological tools, my weapons are crude and blunt. I forgot who wrote that it was easier to make our beliefs conform to our rituals than to make our rituals conform to our beliefs, but I embraced the idea. "When I was a kid," I told her, "I remember being scared of the dark. One time when I was walking along a dark street, I pretended to not be afraid. I whistled to myself. It worked; pretty soon I wasn't afraid at all. Honey, pretend you’re not afraid."

Sometimes it's easier to surrender. "You make it sound simple but pretending is just too hard," she said.

"Simple doesn’t mean easy," I reminded her. "My grandmother told me," reminding her of that old lady who grew more insightful with aging, "If you want something you never had you have to do something you've never done."

"But I had it, I had it all."

"But you don't -- we don't – have that life anymore. We can't get back there, we have to move forward. We'll be careful but we're going to live every day as fully as we can. Cancer doesn’t mean you’re waiting to die, it means you have to live each day as fully as you can, until you die."

Her depression spoke: "What if I can't do that? This cancer is taking me, I'm afraid . . ."

"We're going to live our lives with hope, believing in tomorrow," I insisted. "We'll go to sleep each night holding each other, loving each other, full of expectations." I didn't tell her the rest of my thought -- "even if that doesn't happen we'll sleep thinking it might. Why let reality interfere?"

I tried to be strong for both of us, but it was Jill who became the strong one, strong enough to let me cry at night as I held her, letting me think she was asleep.

She was strong enough to let me comfort her even when she wanted to withdraw into her illness. She accepted what was happening and soothed me when it should have been me supporting her.

She asked to promise to be strong, to go on living. "I know you'll think of me," she said, "but please, think mostly of the happy times."

I wasn't ready to give up. We found other sorcerers – oh, they called themselves oncologist neurosurgeons but they were sorcerers – who offered a different magic. "Let us cut you as an offering to the gods," they said. Well, they really said "The outlook is very bad, it's an invasive tumor. This is an experimental procedure but sometimes if we take as much of the tumor as we can it helps." They did offer hope. We wanted that, we needed it. Without hope there is only despair.

Sometimes despair wins, and some stories do not have a happy ending.

It's dusk now and the cliff overlooking the ocean is beckoning.

I can't let go of that night half a year ago. I remember her reminding me of the both of us being with her mother when she was dying. Her Mom asked Jill to hold her hand. My wife did that until her mother finally let go of life. Jill’s face showed calmness and acceptance when she told me she thought about holding her mother’s hand that long ago night, and then she reached over and said, "Honey, would you please hold my hand." I fell asleep holding a woman I loved and awoke into a different world. It wasn't her beside me; it was something else, a wasted figure, too thin, too cold.

Her body died and with it, my spirit.

Long before cancer changed our lives we stood on this cliff and decided we never wanted to be buried. We’d have our ashes scattered from this cliff, instead. Jill remembered being here when we were young and healthy, and asked me to promise to do that for her.

I wish I was as strong as she thought I was. I can almost feel her here with me; I can almost feel her holding my hand. I can't just scatter her ashes over that cliff and let them drift into the ocean.

I'll carry them over; we'll fly into the water together, and never be apart again.