A Lost Friendship During Illness

There was a season when everything in my body felt under construction. An ICD change, two cardiac ablations, and a cardioversion were all needed to keep me alive.

I knew the sounds of the monitors and where to sign the consent forms from prior stays. Nodding when doctors said, ‘We’ll take good care of you,’ was nothing new. Nor was being brave under the fluorescent lights of procedure and operating rooms.

There was only one fear in the middle of that — and it happened.

She walked away while my chest was being opened metaphorically and electrically rewired. I don’t tell that part dramatically. I say it plainly. The timing was what hurt. Not just that she left, but that she left when I was physically fragile. Even after I asked her to stay.

Months later, when I was steady again, the cancer diagnosis came. Tests. Treatments. Radiation. One fight hadn’t fully ended as another began.

When Love Leaves During Illness

What I needed during that stretch wasn’t romance. It wasn’t promises. It wasn’t even reconciliation. I needed to know she cared. A text. A check-in. Some signal that the friendship we once shared carried weight.

I never heard from her.

With hope as my companion, I fought the version of myself that wanted to harden. Even when it would have been easier to give in, I refused.

A year later a new round of cancer besieged me. The memories are as fresh today as when they first happened. And yet I’m still here.

I don’t like the term fighting. There were no options anyway.
What it felt like instead was Yoda’s teaching: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

People hear my story and assume anger would live here.

It doesn’t.

Only The Force does.

Don’t misunderstand me, anger is something I’ve tried to find. I searched for it the way some people search for closure. But hope keeps interrupting. Not hope that she’ll come back. Just hope that what we had meant something, even if it couldn’t survive the storm.

Three years later, if she called, the first feeling wouldn’t be rage. It would be relief. Relief that I didn’t imagine it wasn’t disposable. Relief that during the hardest season of my life, I mattered in some real way.

That doesn’t mean I’d run back blindly. I wouldn’t. I’ve learned too much for that.

If she came back, I would weigh it carefully and I use that word intentionally. I would want to know if what I felt had mass on her side of the scale. Not fantasy, convenience nor timing.

Weight.

If she cared but didn’t know how to show up, that’s tragedy. If she didn’t care enough to try, that’s clarity. Either way, I’d cautious.

Cancer changes how you measure time. Heart procedures change how you measure fragility. Love leaving during both changes how you measure people.

But here’s what did not change.

I learned the real meaning of love.

What Love Looks Like During Illness

Love Is Presence.

Love isn’t loud. It isn’t social media. It isn’t passion. Love is presence. It’s calling or texting when the diagnosis comes and showing up when machines are beeping and the future is uncertain. It’s that one sentence that says, “You’ve got this.”

I offered that love but never received it and her absence hasn’t erased it.

The caution I carry now isn’t bitterness. It’s earned awareness. I am not afraid of loving again. What I am afraid of is investing that deeply without proof of capacity.

Some people harden after loss. I didn’t. I stayed open and kept writing and hoping all the while walking through cancer without turning my heart to stone.

Hope stopped me from becoming angry. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because I refuse to let pain decide who I become.

If she never contacts me again, I don’t know if I’ll have total peace. That’s the honest answer. Silence is heavy. It makes me question the scale of everything that came before it.

But I do know this:

During my worst season, I loved fully.
I did not shut down. Cruelty never followed.
My suffering was never weaponized.

I stayed open.

Whether she ever confirms it or not, that love still carries weight. And maybe that’s what matters most. Not whether she returns and explains. Not even if she says I meant something to her.

What matters is this.

When my body was under siege, my heart still knew how to show up.

Caution lives here now.
Capability does too.

And that, more than anything, tells me I will survive more than cancer.

The Weight of Silence

On 3:16, three years ago today, there was a moment.

Biblically, that date speaks of love given and not withheld. She did not say goodbye or say that she hated me. She did not close the door with anger. All she said was, “Don’t write anymore.”

That was the last I heard from her.

No argument. No resolution. Just silence where language used to live.

I have often wondered about the weight of that date. About love that endures versus love that retreats. If 3:16 means anything, it reminds me that love is less about who stays. It is more about how fully it is given.

I gave fully. And still do.

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