Cancer vs. Christmas Magic
Shelley and Keith Hardeman
by Keith T. Hardeman
Note: This is a story I wrote seven years ago. My wife Shelley received the bad news of a breast cancer diagnosis on December 6, 2017. Her opening chemotherapy a few days before Christmas was absolutely horrible. But a little Christmas magic helped undo some of the devastation.
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. – Burton Hills
My wife’s early December diagnosis certainly tested our once indomitable holiday spirits. But despite the ominous cancer cloud hovering over our heads and the lingering chemo effects of her terrible first treatment on December 21, we hoped Christmas would still be enjoyable – well, relatively speaking of course. It was nice to have our adult children Karen and Nick travel from their respective out-of-town homes to join us.
Shelley and I had decided in advance that we would do our best not to let cancer completely take Christmas away from us. And though we fell short in more than a few areas, we carried out as many of our two-decades-long family traditions as best we could. Karen pitched in as she, with some help from Nick, worked diligently during the afternoon of Christmas Eve in making and decorating Christmas cookies from old family recipes.
Not only was that chemo infusion fraught with intense nausea, it just physically sucked the life out of Shelley for a few days. And I’ll freely admit that the entire time since the early December diagnosis had been a poignant struggle for me. Because of endless appointments and her devastating treatment effects, we weren’t able to finish Christmas shopping, and the presents we got for one another and the kids went pretty much unwrapped. We did manage to get a few of them into gift bags, but most of the presents were simply left in their original store bags under the tree. We were also unable to make our traditional trek to a local, iconic downtown candy store for our yearly stocking stuffers. Sadly, and for the first time since Shelley and I were married, our Christmas stockings hung flat on the fireplace when we turned in on Christmas Eve, well before 10:00 pm. We didn’t have the energy or spirit to do anything more.
Since our cancer nightmare began, I’d had great difficulty sleeping. Therefore, it came as no surprise that I lay in bed wide-awake at 3:30 am on Christmas morning. So I decided to go out to the living room and lie down on the couch. I thought that turning on the tree lights might provide a little relaxation.
When I plugged them in, however, I was quite surprised to see, in the dim multicolored glow, that things around the tree and fireplace were not at all as we’d left them a few hours earlier.
I noticed that much of what previously was in shopping bags somehow got transferred to tagged gift bags or were wrapped in festive holiday paper. Furthermore, there were a number of additional packages under the tree, and all four of the once-flat stockings were stuffed to capacity. It was eerily similar to the Christmas-morning scenes we used to create for our kids when they were little and believed in Jolly Old St. Nicholas.
Holy crap, I thought, did Santa really did make a midnight visit to our home? Was this Christmas magic?
Obviously, these merry extras were a result of something even better – the loving efforts of our own St. Nick and St. Karen. I later learned those two stayed up until well after 2:00 am, quietly and frenetically working to make this wearisome Christmas as magical as possible. If that didn’t beat all. I grinned and shook my head in pleasant astonishment. I then turned on some Christmas music at very low volume and finally managed to drift back to sleep for a bit on the couch.
It was still dark when I woke up at about 6:00 am. For a little more holiday ambience to complement the tree lights and soft carols, I lit a log in the fireplace. For life necessity, I put on some freshly ground holiday blend coffee. It had snowed some the day before. And while the coffee was brewing, I peered through the kitchen window and saw that the white blanket still covered our lawn. The soft radiance of our outdoor Christmas lights illuminating through the snow on the bushes and outside stairway handrail was simply breathtaking. It was certainly looking a lot like Christmas.
No one else was up, yet, and as I took my first drink of piping hot coffee, I sat and thought about how nice the anticipation of the day would have been were it not for this awful hand that was dealt to my wife. Even as adults, Karen and Nick would have excitedly opened their presents. Shelley and I would have basked in the exhilaration of another successful holiday gift-giving operation. Throughout the afternoon, we would so much enjoy the kitchen’s anticipatory aromas of preparing the grand Christmas dinner. And after a late dessert of homemade pumpkin pie and Christmas cookies, we’d conclude the evening sitting by the blazing fireplace and brightly lit tree, drinking toasts to one another while sipping wine and 18-year-old single-malt scotch as we capped off another glorious holiday season.
Sadly, I knew little of that would be happening today.
But then a sense of perspective entered my emotionally fragile mind. While we’d been consumed and devastated by our own crisis, cancer had most certainly not limited itself to our family. I sat and thought about some of the faces of hopelessness I’d seen at the cancer clinic during Shelley’s appointments. I remembered that many others were experiencing the same, dreadful ordeal we were. And I considered the veritable tidal wave of support we had from friends and loved ones. They brought us food and wonderful gifts. They spent time listening to us, even while we emotionally fell apart trying to cope. They provided rides and ran errands for us. They endlessly texted and emailed with me when I needed to vent, sometimes at 3:00 in the morning. I thought about the unrelenting, brilliant light of love they continuously shine on us.
In spite of Karen’s and Nick’s late-night holiday labors, everyone was up by 8:00 am to open presents. Shelley was finally strong enough to sit up for longer than a few minutes at a time, and she, too, was able to enjoy a bit of good, hot coffee. Our kids then proceeded to take over the normal parenting duties in distributing gift bags and packages. They also handed us our stockings they’d filled with nuts and candy.
I proudly sported the present from Nick I liked best, a bright pink “fight like a girl” breast-cancer-awareness T-shirt. Thanks to a local jeweler’s ability to succeed with a rush order, Shelley was able to wear her gift from me, a specially made gold and diamond pendant, which was inscribed, “With you every step of the way.” It turned out that not even cancer’s unwelcome presence could impede the pleasure derived from Christmas morning.
Karen’s fiancé came over in the late afternoon and joined our celebration into the evening. Thanks to some grocery shopping Karen had done for us the day before, she and I managed to prepare an acceptably decent Christmas dinner. Afterward, we all sat down to watch Shelley’s favorite holiday movie, The Polar Express. By then, she was smiling a lot and said she was feeling much more like her pre-chemo self.
It was, indeed, an enjoyable and memorable Christmas. But, admittedly, on that day I was already looking forward to future Christmases with Shelley, and hopefully without the cancer cloud hanging over us. To paraphrase a sentimental line from the TV show Friends, the love and support given to us by our own friends and family have made us feel like the luckiest people in the world. And, together, we both want to spend the rest of our lives trying to make them all feel the same way.
Since Shelley was unable to consume any alcohol, the five of us brought Christmas night to a close by lightly clinking champagne flutes of sparkling white grape juice.
We made our toast to her.
And to her future good health.
And to our cherished, helpful friends.
And to St. Karen and St. Nick.
And … to Christmas magic.
Keith T. Hardeman is professor emeritus at Westminster College and former faculty member at the University of Northern Iowa. He has authored two books on the cancer experience: The Shadow of Trepidation: Reflections on Caregiving during my Wife’s Battle with Breast Cancer, and Don’t say “Everything Happens for a Reason”: What Patients and Caregivers want Friends to know about Helping them through the Horrors of Cancer. His wife Shelley is currently in remission.
