Making Memories

When Owen’s cancer came back in 2019, it felt like my world had been shattered. Navigating his original diagnosis and treatment in 2017, or Cancer 1.0 as I now call it, was the hardest thing we had ever done, but as we were repeatedly told, the cancer was “curable and treatable,” so the four months of brutal treatment would be finite. Even our surgeon at UCLA told us “This is a bump in the road.” Clearly, it wasn’t.

When that routine PET scan in 2019 showed that the cancer had metastasized and that it was in Owen’s lungs, albeit just small spots, we learned that this was no longer a bump in the road. This was the road. Just about six years prior, metastatic head and neck cancer had no real treatment, patients were given about 9-15 months. But in 2019, with the advances in immunotherapy, some metastatic head and neck cancer patients were able to beat the disease or at least keep it at bay, but only about 10-12% of patients responded. Clearly, Cancer 2.0 was going to be different.

So of course, me being, well, me, decided I would research every doctor, every treatment, do whatever it takes, move mountains to get Owen into that 10-12%. That’s not how cancer works – but I didn’t get the memo.  Between my decision to, you know, cure Owen’s cancer but also contend with the very real possibility that he would not be here in 9-15 months, I was a bit, well, on edge. I couldn’t sleep. I needed support. I happened to meet an older woman at a meeting who had just retired from a 40-year career working as a hospice nurse. I confided in her that I was having trouble, well, juggling a very busy business, raising two kids, and you know, curing Owen’s Cancer. 

She told me two things: “Owen is not dying today. He is not dying tomorrow. When that changes, you will know. In the meantime, make memories!” Make memories? Fuck you. Making memories was like a code for “he’s going to die, sooner than later, so you might as well put that whole curing him thing out of your head and do lots of super fun things!”  I thanked her and decided that (of course) she was wrong, and that Owen was definitely going to be in the 10% but sure, we would also “make memories” that we wouldn’t need in the long run because he wasn’t going to die. So there – annoying Hospice Nurse Lady. Who needs your stupid advice.

In fact, I’ve always hated the phrase “making memories.” When people would post photos of themselves on some fabulous vacation in Tahiti with the caption, “Here we are, making memories!” I would find it disingenuous at best, irritating always. It always seemed like a toxic social media phrase created to make others feel bad that they weren’t having as perfectly memorable a life. It was also way too early in the journey of cancer 2.0 for Owen and me to be able to talk about the worst-case scenario – so making a bucket list of must-do memories was not something either one of us was up for.  On top of all of that, Covid hit. Suddenly trips we planned, plays we would see, dinners we would host were not an option. Instead, we were all home, together, 24/7. With nothing open and nowhere to go. 

During the next 18 months during the Covid lockdown, Owen didn’t feel sick from the cancer, he had manageable side effects from treatments, but they were intermittent (he was also absolutely heroic in how he dealt with it all). He was being treated at Moore’s Cancer Center in La Jolla, so we would leave Santa Barbara very early in the morning to drive down for his bi-weekly infusions, and then need to find somewhere to get food when everything during that time was take-out. We happened on a Himalayan restaurant in a strip mall in Encinitas which thereafter became our regular stop. We ordered to-go and then would sit in the car eating our lunch or dinner – juggling the circular aluminum to-go tins and cardboard lids on our laps, trying not to get rice all over the car. We would always place the cardboard box of samosas on the dashboard to share.

 I loved those lunches. We would talk about life. And cancer. And Covid. And the kids. We listed to NPR and podcasts and Bruce Springsteen and nibbled Naan bread as we sat in the car with the lovely view of the Goodwill store and Sprouts. There was even another store in the strip mall called “California Backyard Birds” that carried everything you could every want if you were bird nerds, like we were.  We got to-go for ourselves and then got to-go for our birds. A perfect outing.

 In fact, in the three years and two months of Owen fighting recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer, most of which was during the Covid lockdown, I have some of the best memories of our 33 years together. Our weekly masked trips to the local garden center were sacred. We would split up, I would do flowers, he would do vegetables. I could always track Owen by watching his hat as he meandered through the aisles, looking for some rare heirloom tomato varietal that we didn’t yet have.  I would love the moment when he would find me piling yet five more lavender plants on our cart and agreeing that one could NEVER have too many plants.   In the fall of 2020, when Owen needed ten days of radiation for growing tumors in his lungs, we rented a VRBO in Mission Beach so we could all be together, since the kids had zoom school anyway.  Instead of it being ten days about cancer, it became ten days of board games and beach walks and finding that amazing Italian place in Ocean Beach with fabulous gnocchi for takeout. We called it the radiation vacation.

During the last year, when Owen was really feeling the effects of the cancer, I remember the peaceful afternoons sitting in our precious backyard, watching a pair of cliff swallows build a mud nest under the eaves of our roof, one drop of mud at a time. Owen would marvel at how the birds innately understand how to engineer such a thing while talking about how lucky he was to have lived the life he had lived. I would marvel at his ability to transcend earthly attachments and face the Greatest Fear any of us will ever have and still be able to find joy in watching the birds.

Making memories isn’t about bucket lists and expensive trips. It’s not about overpriced concert tickets or things we spend months planning. Making memories is about presence. It’s about being exactly where we are, when we are there and finding the grace to courageously and unabashedly embrace it. I will always be grateful for that hospice nurse, taking me in and holding me up when I most needed it. But I also know now why I don’t like the term “making memories.” If we are aware of or focused on “making memories” we are already living in the future, looking back on our lives. The only way to create memories is to surrender to the present, to this moment, wherever that is - whether that be playing board games, marveling at birds, or strolling through a garden center looking for lavender. I remember it all. But most of all, I will always have the most wonderful memories of sitting in the car, listening to Bruce Springsteen and eating samosas in a parking lot.