What Comes Next When the Ending Isn’t Happy?
I was thoroughly unprepared for the unhappy ending when it came for me.
Everything I love about happy endings is represented in the following brief montage of “cheating death” moments from a few of my favorite movies.
It’s that moment when ET’s heart light went out, but was immediately rekindled by the love of the boy who ultimately saved him.
It’s when cherubic young Carol-Ann was literally dragged from the mouth of death by her relentlessly strong mother in Poltergeist.
It’s grieving and world-weary Dr. Richard Kimble, who not only exposes the people responsible for killing his wife in The Fugitive, but manages to earn the respect of hardened detective Samuel Gerard in the process (best ending ever).
Harry Potter’s entire modus operandi is his ability to cheat death. Throughout the series, he’s repeatedly referred to as the boy who lived.
Hollywood’s message is clear. No matter the size of the monster or the apparent hopelessness of the situation, everything turns out spectacularly fine in the end. And, oh my god, but I believed it. I believed all of it!
Which is probably why I was so thoroughly unprepared for the unhappy ending when it came for me.
In 2017, my daughter Ana died after a nearly 5-year struggle with a rare childhood cancer called inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. Over the course of Ana’s brutal treatment, the cancer thwarted every attempt her doctors made to stop its progression.
There were no miracle drugs for Ana, no shots to protect her from the battle that raged inside her body, and no one who knew how to save her. From the time she was diagnosed in 2012 until the time she died on March 22, 2017 (two months shy of her 16th birthday), we never uttered the words “remission” or “no evidence of disease” or “she’s cured.”
Well, that’s not exactly true.
Ana’s cancer originally presented as a giant tumor in her portal vein, the vein that supplies blood to the liver. The tumor, fed by an ample blood supply, had grown large enough to engulf her liver and fill her entire abdomen.
The only way to treat a tumor of that size — a tumor that made her look 6 months pregnant at the age of 11 — was to remove it completely, along with her liver. On February 5th, 2013, that’s exactly what her brilliant surgeons did.
We got the call we’d been waiting for, a Hollywood moment in its own right. A viable liver was available. Of course, our good fortune was someone else’s not-so-happy ending, but what could we do? We rushed Ana to the hospital where she was whisked into a 10-hour surgery.
The transplanted liver saved Ana’s life. She was discharged from the hospital after ten days with an arsenal of medication and a boatload of hope. Kids are remarkably resilient. Within months of the surgery, her hair was growing back, she was gaining weight, and she was finally getting taller.
I thought the nightmare was over. Her doctor repeatedly told us that the transplant was the cure. We’d gotten our happy ending. I mean, of course we had. Snatching a child from the jaws of death exactly at the moment that all seemed lost was the way these things worked.
I spoke the words “cancer-free” once, maybe twice, over the next six months. I exhaled. We’d done it! My faith in happy endings had obviously been rewarded.
Ana had an MRI seven months after her liver transplant. The scan was a big deal because she got it locally. Before the transplant, we’d had to travel two hours to the children’s hospital where she’d been put to sleep for MRI scans because it was too painful to lie on her back for 45 minutes.
But now the tumor was gone and Ana was determined to avoid the drive and have the scan without going under general anesthesia. She promised me she would hold still and she kept her promise.
She was brave. She did everything right, so it seemed like a particularly cruel twist of fate when spots showed up in her lungs and near the site of her transplant. They should have been nothing. That’s what her (original) oncologist said as she tried to calm my escalating anxiety. She sent Ana for more scans just to be sure.
The spots weren’t nothing. Ana’s cancer had come back and it had spread. We transferred her care to an oncologist who had experience treating incredibly rare childhood tumors. Ana needed more surgery, more treatment, and more recovery. Relapse meant the future was much less certain.
Relapse was a reentry, but not back to the life of normalcy we craved. We were returning to cancerland.
I never stopped hoping for Ana’s miracle but gradually, over the next few years of failed treatment, I lost faith in the idea of happy endings. Then, the worst happened.
Ana’s heart stopped, but unlike ET, no amount of love or anguish could get it beating again.
Carol Ann’s mother from Poltergeist had saved her, but I couldn’t hold onto Ana tightly enough, so she fell into the abyss.
Harry Potter (the boy who lived!) survived thanks to the magic of his mother’s spell. But Ana was the girl who died. Her cancer was stronger than my love.
There was no deus ex machina to pull Ana from the abyss. I’d been fooled by all those happy endings.
Ana had died. That’s how it ended. I lost interest in the notion of returning to normal. Instead, I sat in my sun-drenched yard, hating spring for returning without Ana, and watched the birds visit my brand-new feeders.
Birding was an accidental hobby.
I’d become obsessed with hummingbirds in those first terrible weeks after Ana died. She’d wanted a hummingbird tattoo, but was too young and sick to get one. In my grief-stricken fog, I reasoned that a visit from a hummingbird would mean that Ana was communicating with me from beyond the grave.
I hung a hummingbird feeder in my yard and waited for the tiny birds to appear. When they arrived in late June, I was mesmerized. I loved them so much that I bought more feeders and filled them with all kinds of seed. Soon my yard was filled with birds and birdsong.
Birds live in the moment. They survive in impossibly hostile environments. They don’t bank on happy endings. The birds seemed indifferent to the ever-present threat of disaster. They pushed on in torrential rain, blistering heat, and astonishing cold. They kept flying and singing and building their nests, no matter how hard things got.
Birds were a singular comfort to me in those early months of deep grief. Once, when I found a dead sparrow beneath the feeders, I wrapped it in a paper towel and, sobbing, buried it beside our nectarine tree. The other birds paid no attention to this tragedy.
I let despair consume me when Ana died. I wanted to die too. And yet, I had to carve a path forward. Somehow, I had to keep flying.
I was lost and I didn’t care, but there were people who needed me. My younger daughter, Emily, was 12 when Ana died. She turned 13 a month later in a sad quiet house without her sister there to celebrate. She was my first stepping stone to reentry.
A few months later, I dismantled Ana’s room and turned it into my office. I left her shelves alone. That’s where I keep her ashes. They’re in a custom-made ceramic urn with a hummingbird painted on one side. Ana’s room, now my office, was my second stepping stone. Spending time in the space she loved most, a space filled with the echo of her life, helped me regain my footing a bit.
I had to work. There was no choice. After a few weeks of dragging myself into my office each day, I realized that I hated the work I’d been doing for the past 15 years. It reminded me of Ana and of all the delicious years when the girls were little, but it had become pointless and uninspiring.
I decided to change the focus of my business to writing. It was scary, but I simply could not keep doing what I’d been doing. I reached out to my clients and let them know. I asked them if they needed any content for their clients or their websites. I sent out emails to new prospects and publications. I wrote about Ana, determined to tell the world about her.
This was the third stepping stone.
All these changes, bit by bit, became a path forward. I didn’t return to my old life, though some remnants remain. My house is the same. My morning routine is mostly the same. I am still a mother. But much of me has changed. The life I lived before my child got cancer seems like a glimpse from a dream.
I still love the birds. I watch them at my office window while I work. I learn their names — Goldfinches, Indigo Buntings, White-throated Sparrows, and so many more. I gape at the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds each spring when they return from their long migration. I cry when they leave in September. I admire the way the Blue Jays glide through my yard, landing silently and decisively on the feeders even when it rains. Especially when it rains.
I move slowly through my life. I don’t think too much about the future. My days are filled with writing or they are empty. I like it both ways.
For me, reentry is an ongoing process of trying to navigate a world where happy endings aren’t promised. Understanding that reality, and living through it, changed everything.
Sometimes reentry isn’t a train roaring into the station or an airplane screaming onto the runway. Sometimes it’s simply getting out of bed in the morning and choosing to face the day. Sometimes it’s a dear friend meeting you on your favorite trail and walking quietly beside you. Sometimes it’s a Song Sparrow landing on a branch and singing loudly, not in spite of the rain, but because of it.