A January Gift

To excel at understatement, I will just tell you that it was a bad month.

I was a graduate student at MIT, with an almost-three-year-old, when my husband’s persistent headache experienced over the course of a week and thought to be sinus related, worsened, sending him into delirium. Less than 48 hours later, I stood by Ross, his head wrapped in bandages, as the neurosurgeon gave us the news.

“A glioblastoma multiforme grade 4 brain tumor.”

Stunned and exhausted from the long and tense wait while Ross was in surgery, I asked the unthinkable. The surgeon had kind eyes as he responded.

“I am sorry. Seven to nine months at most.”

Later that day, as I was numb with shock and grief, calling relatives and friends, checking on Isaac who had been left with friends in our student housing complex, notifying my teachers I would be missing the start of the semester, I realized with surprise that it was my birthday.

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A year later, I was back in the hospital, this time in the labor and delivery ward. A nurse walked through the halls with me, fed me ice chips, and offered her hands to squeeze while I pushed. Ross, who had beat the surgeon’s averages in body, if not in mind, sat in the corner of the delivery room, quiet.

The next morning the doctor came to my room while I was helping Ross to the bathroom and gently told me I needed rest time. My husband went home with my mother-in-law, and I spent an extra day in the hospital, alone with Louis. I napped when he napped – something I don’t think I did for a very long time after leaving that building.

And it was my birthday.

I had the gift of Louis in my arms, and I had no time to feel sorry for myself – my world was cracking apart, had cracked apart, and I was focused on how to get through the day and night and then the next one and the one after that.

That evening, I heard a knock on my hospital room door and a head popped around the corner. Then two heads. Two friends, classmates in my program at MIT, walked into my room with a very large white cardboard box.

Inside was a birthday cake decorated with beautiful pastel sugar flowers. Looking down to read “Happy Birthday Susan & Louis” written in delicate script across the expanse of frosting, I burst into tears.

On a normal day, I will take cheese over cake. It’s not even a contest. That evening, that cake was the most beautiful thing I had seen (besides my newborn baby Louis of course). And the most luscious thing I had ever tasted.

Someone remembered my birthday. And the cake they brought wasn’t a small cupcake or brownie for one. Or a tiny “serves 1-2” kind of confection, but a big cake ready for a big party.

That big cake sent a powerful message to my sad heart that evening. I was worth something. My birthday was worth a party-size celebration. Even in the hospital. Even with my dying husband at home with our other son, being cared for by my saint of a mother-in-law.

I blew out the candles (totally forbidden in the hospital but all bets were off at that point) and cut the first piece. Ruth and Cheri, ever thoughtful, had brought plates and napkins, and we shared my very large cake with hospital staff. I laughed, and cried again, and got hugs from my two friends.

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Ross died five months later, and the subsequent Januaries were not the best. The month was bound up with too many memories of emergency room scans, neurosurgeons bearing unspeakable news, of bringing new life into the world while my kind and funny and supportive husband sat motionless and emotionless in the corner of the delivery room. The month had no power to override those things, even in the face of the miracle of Louis’ birth and the continuity of life I experienced every day in my children.  

But in those dark January days that followed each year, I still remembered that outrageously big and beautiful birthday cake and my two friends who came bearing smiles and hugs.

Then about ten years after Ross died, I faced the new year with a different thought.  

Why was I letting my January be highjacked? 

Because there was no one else doing it. It was all me and I was invested in the sadness of it all. Girding myself to face the dark month ahead.

That year, I decided to focus on the cake, and all the good things in my life—before, during, and after that time that was defined by those two Januaries.

We can choose how we carry our past forward.

January was just a name to a month with no real power. Agency sat with me. I decided to focus on the promise of a new year that the month brings and took back my Januaries. I made the decision that a month, a season, a memory does not get to own me forever.

But even as January has transformed back into a month of celebration, I remember two friends showing up at the door to my quiet and lonely hospital room. The gesture remains even as the details are hazy. Was the cake vanilla or chocolate? Did it have fruit or chocolate filling?

It’s no matter. That cake had a Michelin Three Star rating in caring and kindness.

That cake has been a bellwether for me: showing up matters more than getting it right. It matters more than the details.

And as simple as that sounds, it has not always been easy for me. Even in the face of my own loss, I am ashamed to say I have not always been a good friend to others in need. The usual excuses wheedle their way into my heart and head: I don’t know what to say, I don’t know their struggles, this is awkward, I don’t have time.  It can be so much easier to skip a visit, a phone call, or a note.

I can’t make up for what I have lacked as a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mother. But that January gift and the gesture of two friends is a guiding star for me that grows in importance as I try to do better.

We don’t have to know all the right words to say or to be perfect in our actions. We don’t need to fix grief. We often put too much pressure on ourselves to make things right when we can’t.  We don’t even need to understand. Saying, “I don’t know what to say but I am here to support you and tell you I care” is often enough.

I saw Cheri in Seattle during my U.S. road trip and while walking through the Japanese Gardens, told her, not the first time, what that hospital visit and birthday cake meant to me. I had the same conversation with Ruth a few weeks earlier on that same trip while we were paddle boarding in Jackson Hole. I marvel at the power of a cake to stand the test of time, to shape friendships, to color my world, to inspire me to take back my Januaries.

I know now that showing up can change the shape of a day, a month, even a life. It did for me. And sometimes, all it takes is a cake.

Who can you show up for?

Where can you bring the metaphorical cake — not to fix what is broken, or to say the perfect thing, but simply to be present?