Before I Had the Words
I lost my husband, Larry, to cancer in 2020. But my grief began before I lost him—before we even had a diagnosis.
Toward the end of 2018, it became apparent that something wasn’t right. He was being sent for a CT scan, and although we didn’t yet know what was happening, I felt an uneasiness I couldn’t explain.
Then I heard Colin James’s song Paper Airplanes:
“Paper airplanes and castles made of sand”
The thought of something being here for a moment and then gone struck me deeply. In that moment, I felt I knew. I couldn’t have explained it or proved it, but I felt I was going to lose him.
Larry was diagnosed in January 2019. What I had feared became something we had to face together.
Looking back, that song remains tied to the time before the diagnosis, when I was caught between hoping I was wrong and feeling that our lives were about to change.
Losing him in 2020 changed my life. I’m still finding words for that
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