First, a half‑assed apology for slacking in the writing department. And I say half‑assed because, truthfully, I don’t even know how to continue. The past few weeks have been both a whirlwind and a tornado rolled into one hell of an emotional rollercoaster. To say things have been “busy” is the understatement of the century. Let me explain.
In a previous post, I mentioned the cousin who could tell a story that took you through all the neighboring towns, down every side street, and into the weeds of every nuance of the day—when, in reality, the actual point of the story took place two feet outside her front door. Classic Laura. And in true Laura form, this story will take detours, derail, and probably stop for snacks along the way. At this point, you should expect nothing less.
See, Laura is a warrior. I can’t say it any other way. Actually, yes I can: she’s a BEAST. About twenty years ago, trauma struck, and our family was reintroduced—yes, for a second time—to the world of brain cancer. The first tango with this horrible disease happened when Laura and I were kids, when our beautiful cousin Diane bravely battled it. Diane lost her fight when I was just ten and Laura was twelve.
My memories of Diane are stitched together with her smile and that childish belly laugh—the kind that made you giggle along even when you had no idea what was funny or where the story was going. Laura and Diane were cut from the same cloth in that way. They both had that magnetic, contagious joy that made you forget, for a moment, that life could be cruel.
Back then, brain cancer didn’t seem that bad to my ten‑year‑old brain. Kids don’t understand the gravity of things; they understand moments. Laughter. Popsicles. The way adults whisper when they think you’re not listening. But here we are, twenty‑plus years later. We are grown. We are wives. We are mothers. And one of us now had brain cancer.
And that changes everything.
It’s one thing to watch illness from the sidelines as a child, buffered by innocence and distraction. It’s another to face it as an adult, with the full weight of understanding pressing on your chest. Suddenly, you know what’s at stake. You know what can be lost. You know how fragile the world becomes when someone you love is pulled into the fight of their life. And, yet, there was still that child-like innocence that, OF COURSE, Laura was gonna be just fine. She’s my first cousin. She HAS to be fine. Right? We have so much more in life to do…she’s gonna be just fine.
Laura didn’t just face it—she charged at it. She fought with a ferocity that made the rest of us stand a little straighter, breathe a little deeper, and believe a little harder. She cracked jokes when she shouldn’t have had the energy to speak. She comforted us when we were supposed to be comforting her. She turned fear into fuel and pain into purpose with a side dish of comic relief. Safe to say, we have all spent the past 20 years rolling our eyes, laughing, and continually repeating, “Oh Laur…” both out loud and on the inside while shaking our heads.
And in the middle of all that, life kept happening. Her kid needed lunches packed. Jobs needed doing. The world refused to pause, even though ours had. That’s the part no one prepares you for—the way normalcy and crisis braid together until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. “Hey Laur, how ya feelin’,” I’d ask. “I spent the morning on the floor of that bathroom…sick,” she’d sometimes respond, so matter-of-factly that it was almost funny. She would answer the phone, and I’d know in an instant that she had a migraine by the sound of her first, “Hello”.
So yes, I’ve been absent. Distracted. Pulled in a thousand emotional directions. But if there’s one thing Laura has taught me – it’s that stories matter. Even the messy ones. Especially the messy ones. They remind us who we are, where we’ve been, and what we’re capable of surviving. So here it is.
My first “Laura story detour” came around five‑something in the morning, when a text rolled in from Laura’s sister, Donna. Something along the lines of, “Laura fell. Going to the hospital. Keep ya posted.” Very Donna. Short. Vague. Zero context. A message that somehow manages to say everything and nothing at the same time.
Now, the words “Laura fell” are not exactly breaking news. She’s never been what one might call graceful. If there were Olympic medals for tripping over air, she’d have a whole display case. But lately, “unsteady” had practically become her middle name. So at first, I didn’t spiral. Not immediately, anyway.
But then the hours started stacking up. And the updates? They didn’t roll in. They didn’t crawl in. They didn’t even limp in. It was like the information got stuck somewhere over New Jersey, circling aimlessly, refusing to land on my phone. Meanwhile, Donna—our resident mother‑hen since 1962, self‑appointed commander of all family crises—was apparently so wrapped in the information, she didn’t really communicate with them – to me, anyway..
When the update finally did come through, it hit like a punch in the gut: brain bleed near the tumor…from the tumor??
Oh, the backstory… context! That’s right…what’s a Laura story without context?
The night before, I’d talked to her—our usual daily call on my drive home from work. She hurried off the phone, saying, “Oh, Dane, I gotta go.” “What happened?” “Where is this coming from? I just got a headache like thunder. I gotta hang up.” Click . And now, just hours later, she had fallen down a flight of stairs. Hard enough to land her in the hospital.
Every day after that, the updates got worse. Not dramatically worse—just enough worse to keep the dread simmering. She was transferred to New York, to her regular brain cancer team. And in my mind, that meant comfort. Safety. Familiar faces to Laura. The cavalry arriving because they KNEW her, care for her and cared ABOUT her. CLEARLY, this meant a swift and full recovery. That’s what I told myself, anyway. That’s what I needed to believe.
But the updates kept leaning toward surgery. Some days, the updates were uplifting. Little bits of sunshine in a place that was emotionally darker than usual. I took the train into the city to see her. We brought school pictures of my grandkids – how she adored them – and a card Ava wrote out, and Tony scribbled his best one-year-old self could. She would be having brain surgery just a couple days later.
Things blurred after this for me. One minute we were bracing for surgery, the next we were being told it was a success. The team did what they had to do, and she made it through. I clung to that like it was a life raft. Recovery seemed promising—promising enough that I let myself breathe for the first time in days.
I didn’t go back to New York to see her, but I did bother her husband, Lenny, probably way too much. I was holding on to any little string of hope, tugging at it like maybe if I pulled hard enough, the universe would cooperate. He never complained. He just kept answering, kept updating, kept letting me hover from a distance.
Then came the good news: she was being moved to rehab in Jersey. This felt like a win. This felt like momentum. This felt like the part in the movie where the music swells and everyone nods at each other like, “Yeah, we’re gonna get through this.”
We brought the kids to see her in rehab. And God, she was so happy. Her eyes lit up in that unmistakable Laura way—like someone had plugged her back into herself. She was making words and sounds, trying so hard to communicate. And then, in true Laura fashion, she gave us the finger. Well… the wrong finger, but the intention was crystal clear. I had to laugh. Joey was feeding his Godmother breakfast, we were all talking over each other, and there she was, chewing and flipping us off like the queen she was. I snapped a picture and immediately sent it to Donna with, “She’s definitely on the mend! LOL.”
Two days later, we went back with TJ. He was feeding her dinner, telling her how I tried to make him stuffed calamari for Christmas Eve, but hers was better—because of course it was, but it certainly wasn’t HERS – it was Lenny’s! She was so aware. So present. So there. It felt like we were finally on the upswing.
And then the call just 48 hours later.
“Dane, get here. She’s going on hospice. She has pneumonia. This is it. They’re letting everyone in. She may only have hours.”
I stared at my phone like it had personally betrayed me. Like it had delivered the wrong message to the wrong person. Like if I blinked hard enough, the sounds might rearrange themselves into something sane.
What the actual fuck is this?
How does the universe make that kind of jump without warning? How does anyone’s heart keep beating through that kind of whiplash? How did we get HERE, of all places?
It felt like the floor dropped out from under me. Like someone had yanked the emergency brake on a moving train and sent everything flying. One minute we were laughing. The next minute we were racing the clock.
And nothing—absolutely nothing—made sense anymore.
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