Some mornings I wake up to the sound of birds singing and the smell of coffee brewing. It’s a normal miracle that another day has begun. And before my feet hit the floor, the questions are already there. They live in the space between sleep and waking, in the time it takes me to check my calendar, and in the breath I take before I answer the phone.
How long?
That one never really goes away. It just changes form. It sounds like fear on some days. On other days, it sounds like curiosity, like a kid asking about the stars.
I have learned to be okay with not knowing. Or, more accurately, I have learned to coexist with uncertainty, which is distinct from tranquility. Peace implies resolution. What I have is more like a truce—an agreement to share the same house, sit at the same table, and live in the same body that holds both gratitude and fear.
In quiet times, the questions grow. I wonder what my wife Joyce thinks about me now that I see her move through our kitchen with such grace and steadiness. Does she see the man she married, or does she see the treatments, the recoveries, and the close calls? Most likely both. We are all more than one thing at the same time.
Will this good stretch last?
On days when I feel strong, like when energy comes back like an old friend who shows up out of the blue, I ask this. I know that good stretches don’t always happen because I’ve had too many of them interrupted. They are presents. But gifts can feel heavy when you don’t know if you’ll get another one.
I’ve walked this road for six years. Chemotherapy. Operations. Radiation. A transplant of stem cells. Therapy with CAR-T. My body has been a battleground and a place of rebirth so many times that I can’t count them all. And the questions keep coming. Not because I don’t have faith, hope, or strength; I have all of those. But questions don’t care about our strengths. They find the holes in our confidence and make themselves at home there.
What if?
This question is the one that changes shape. It has a thousand different looks. What if I had caught it earlier? That one comes by late at night, bringing regret with it like a shadow. *What if the treatments don’t work anymore? * That one comes up before scans, before appointments, and before the phone call that could change everything. What if I have more time than I think? That one doesn’t come around very often, but when it does, it opens something in my chest that feels like hope.
If I let them, the “what ifs” can stop me in my tracks. They spin out into futures I can’t control, pasts I can’t change, and lives that are happening at the same time as mine. I have learned to let them go through me instead of staying. I do well some days. Some days I don’t. The question doesn’t care either way. It keeps coming back, patiently and persistently, telling me to think about what I can’t know.
What will I miss?
This one comes to family gatherings, weddings, and times when I can’t believe how fast time goes. When I hold a grandchild or watch Joyce laugh at something small, it sits next to me. There is no need to answer the question. It just wants to be seen. So I agree with it. I let it take up the space it needs, but I didn’t let it take over everything else.
What I know about living with uncertainty is that it goes along with everything else. In the same heartbeat, I can feel both scared and hopeful. I can be happy about a clean scan and still jump when the phone rings a week later. I can be truly thankful for today while mourning the tomorrows I might never see. These truths do not negate one another. They stack on top of each other to make something textured, complicated, and completely human.
Am I doing enough?
That’s enough of my time. For the people I care about, that’s enough. Enough to make this chapter important. Cancer has a way of making this question sharper until it hurts. In the past, I could relax because I thought there would always be more tomorrows. Now I measure in a different way. Not in fear, but in focus. I pay more attention. I don’t care about things that don’t matter. I hold on to the things that do.
The heaviness of not knowing is not always the same. Some days it pushes down on me so hard that I can hardly breathe. On some days, it lifts just enough that I almost forget it’s there. Almost. I no longer expect things to be the same. I don’t expect anything anymore, except the questions themselves.
What is left when the body fails?
I think about legacy now, but not in a big way. The things I say goodbye to. The kindness I show to someone who is walking a path I know all too well. The times when Joyce and I are quiet and don’t need to say anything because we’ve already said everything.
And maybe that’s the answer to the question that can’t be answered. Not answers, but presence. Being there for the questions without needing them to be answered. Letting them be because they are now part of this story—my story, our story, the story of anyone who has heard the word “cancer” and felt the ground shift beneath them.
I’m not fighting. I’m not living. I am alive. And living means holding on to everything: the hope and the fear, the thanks and the sadness, the questions and the silence where answers should be.
It’s hard to know what to do. I won’t act like anything else. But I have learned that I can lift heavy things. For six years, I have been carrying them. I’ll carry them for as long as I have to, one day at a time, one question at a time, and one breath at a time.
I will hear birds singing again tomorrow. Or rain. Or nothing at all. And the questions will still be there. And I will greet them like the old friends they have become.
Not foes. Not really friends.
Only a part of the trip.
If you’re on this path—if the questions keep you up at night, if the uncertainty weighs on your chest, and if you feel everything and nothing at the same time—I want you to know something. Even when you’re alone, you’re not alone. People have been in your shoes and asked the same questions that can’t be answered. Your questions don’t make you weak. They show that you are still here, still alive, and still living fully even though you don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s all you need. You are enough.
