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I can’t even begin to put into words what the drive to the hospital was like. Shock and disbelief didn’t just take over—they swallowed us whole. Autopilot was the only thing keeping our cars moving, like our bodies knew the route even though our minds were somewhere else entirely. No one spoke much in my car. What was there to say? We were all bracing for something we couldn’t comprehend.
But we got there within a few minutes of each other. All of us: John, Yero, Joey, TJ, and Sammy. We moved through the hallway like a family that had been punched in the same place at the same time. The room they put her in was larger than a normal single room, but it didn’t matter—it was packed. People everywhere. Every face wearing the same tear‑stained cheeks, the same hollowed‑out expressions, the same pain carved into the skin like it had been there for years.
Minutes turned into hours. Time didn’t behave normally in that room. It stretched, warped, folded in on itself. We watched every too‑deep breath, every flutter of her eyelids, every beep of the machines like they were omens. It was surreal, almost like an out‑of‑body experience. Everything was happening around us, but it felt like we were watching a bad TV show—one of those melodramatic hospital dramas where the writers go too far. Except this wasn’t scripted. This was our life, and it was crueler than anything on screen.
And Laura—of course—was the star. She always had that quiet, unintentional magnetism. Had to laugh, in that twisted, painful way, because oh boy… was she ever like her Aunt Marie—my mom. They both spent their lives as the quiet understudy who finally got their moment under the spotlight, and they were going out with a bang. Even in this. Especially in this.
Her son’s sadness was something I will never forget. It was profound in a way that rearranges you. Only the devastation on her husband’s face could compare. They broke us. Completely. “You are the best mom,” he cried into her ear. His voice cracked, raw and unfiltered. How could this “kid”—yes, a grown man, but forever a kid in my eyes—possibly be faced with this. His tears, his cries, his heart… shattering right in front of us. It was like watching innocence die.
And then there was Lenny. The rock. The man who had walked beside her through every storm, every treatment, every impossible moment. I have never witnessed devotion like his. “What am I gonna do without you?” he pleaded. “How did we get here?” he repeated, like the question itself might hold him together. Exactly. How the fuck did we get here. And why—WHY—was anything going to happen without her? Unfair doesn’t even scratch the surface.
As the day wore on, the room slowly thinned out. People drifted away in ones and twos, like they were afraid to break the spell but couldn’t hold themselves upright anymore. The end of the day was approaching for my crew and me. None of us wanted to walk out of that hospital. Not even close. But the immediates needed their time. Their space. Their final moments with her.
And leaving that room—leaving her—felt like abandoning gravity.

In true form to the drama that is the women in our family, the nurses can say “maybe hours” and our girls will hear “standing ovation, encore, curtain call, and a surprise bonus performance.” They don’t go quickly. They don’t go any way that aligns with medical expectations. They go on their own damn terms.
I remember when my mom was “grave” and shifted to hospice. The doctors had that tone—you know the one—gentle, somber, like they’re narrating a documentary about penguins migrating to their final resting place. They told us death was “imminent,” that we’d be lucky to get a couple of days. Maybe. They said “maybe” the way someone says “don’t get your hopes up.”
But oh nooooo. Mama Rie was not about to follow anyone’s timeline but her own. She stuck around and worked the system for twenty days. Yes. Two-zero. Twenty days of defying every medical prediction, twenty days of proving that stubbornness is genetic, twenty days of giving us moments we didn’t know we needed. And that smile she gave me with her last breath—God, that smile—was worth every second of every hour of those twenty days. I would trade everything I own, everything I am, for even one more of those twenty.
So of course part of me hoped Laura would pull the same stunt. That she’d get twenty. That she’d pull the rug out from under us with some miraculous recovery, some “gotcha!” moment that would make the doctors question their degrees. But Day 2 at the hospital was different. The air felt heavier. The room quieter. Hope didn’t disappear, but it changed shape and it was definitely making its exit.
It was Thursday, January 8th. Laura’s eighty‑something‑year‑old parents were making the trip from Florida, clinging to the hope that this wasn’t the visit it was. But the moment they walked in—just a glance, a single glance—was enough to tell them the truth. And I thought I had seen the worst of it. I thought watching her son break, watching her husband crumble, was the most painful thing a person could witness. But seeing a mother lose her child… that is a grief that rearranges the universe. It was humbling in a way I still can’t fully comprehend.
“No more headaches, Laura,” my aunt whispered – I mean, truly NOT a whisper as our family pretty much has one level of loudness, but it was “quieter” than I expected…so this word would be kinda fitting. “No more chemo. No more cancer.” And somehow, those words became the only thing that made sense. The only thing that felt like mercy. She was going to be free of the chains that had stolen so much from her. Free in a way the rest of us can only dream of being.
I was reminded that I could say my goodbyes. So I did. I bent down to my cousin’s ear and whispered, “Laura Ann… this is some fucking bullshit and I can’t say goodbye to you.” And then I walked out, because staying felt impossible and leaving felt worse. John followed me, silent, because what words exist for that moment.
I didn’t go to the hospital on Friday. My cousins had shifted into the twisted humor our family has always relied on—the kind that bubbles up in the darkest moments and somehow keeps us breathing. Tears turned to laughter over things so wildly inappropriate they can never be repeated in polite company. But they were so perfectly, painfully Donna and Michael and Laura.
“I ordered her the wig,” Donna messaged. “She’d be so pissed if people came to see her with her hair like this.” And of course she sent the picture of the wig and the inspiration photo of Laura—the kind of thing that makes you laugh and cry at the same time because it’s ridiculous and tender and exactly what love looks like in our family.

Saturday, January 10, 2026 was the day Laura transitioned from Warrior Beast to Angel of us all. There’s no softer way to say it. No poetic phrasing that makes it easier to swallow. One moment she was fighting with every ounce of stubborn, fiery, unbreakable spirit she had, and the next… she wasn’t fighting anymore. She didn’t lose. She didn’t give up. She simply crossed over into a place where she didn’t have to battle anything ever again. She, ultimately, won.
It’s strange how a date can carve itself into your bones. How a single day can split your life into “before” and “after.” January 10th became that line in the sand. The day the world shifted. The day the air changed. The day we all felt something.
And honestly—truly—by that point, we were all so done with 2026. Done in a way that isn’t dramatic, but factual. Exhausted. Wrung out. Hollowed. Gutted. It felt like the year had shown up with a baseball bat and a grudge, and it wasn’t satisfied until it took something irreplaceable from us. Losing Laura was the final blow, the one that made the rest of the year feel like background noise.
But even in that moment—especially in that moment—there was this quiet sense that she wasn’t gone so much as transformed. That the Warrior Beast who fought through every surgery, every treatment, every setback, every impossible day had simply stepped into a different role. She became the Angel of us all. The one watching instead of being watched over. The one guiding instead of being guided. The one finally free.
And maybe that’s the only way to survive a day like that—by believing she didn’t leave us, she just changed her job description.