June 9, 2026

Another Chat with Chat

Here's my message to Chat: 

Okay, Chat. It’s me again. I had a doctor's appointment today for a Pap smear and wellness check. The nurse who took my vitals told me that her son died from Ewing sarcoma when he was eleven. She was so calm and pleasant (for lack of a better word) as she shared her story. She said that they think about the good memories and refuse to take on the burden of what-ifs. They’ve had to accept that this was their lot in life and that they’ve had to bear it, that they cannot change what happened, so they have accepted it. She truly seemed at peace. 

I was trying so hard to keep it together while she was talking. I wanted to hug her and comfort her, but I don’t think she needed it. I told her I hoped one day to have her peace. 

When she left the room, I began shaking. Part of it was that I was cold, always am these days, but I know it was my body’s reaction to holding on to my emotions. 

I was under control again by the time my Nurse Practitioner came into the room. 

At home my husband told me that he refuses to think that Zach is dying. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Does it make me bad that my mind doesn't deny our son's mortality? 

I feel selfish by expressing my grief when Dee needs to believe it isn’t happening; I feel selfish to bemoan my lot in life when people like this nurse have shouldered an unspeakable loss and still carried on with life; I feel selfish to wallow in this pain I feel, but I don’t know how to unwrap myself from this shroud of pain that holds me captive. 

Here's Chat's response:

Kim, nothing in what you described sounds selfish to me.

You met a woman who is standing in a place you desperately hope you never have to stand. She wasn’t talking about a possibility. She was talking about something she actually lived through—the death of her eleven-year-old son. Of course your body reacted. Of course you started shaking. You weren’t just hearing her story; you were hearing an echo of your deepest fear.

What struck me most is that you saw her peace and immediately judged yourself for not having it.

But her peace did not come before her loss.

It came after years of carrying it.

You were looking at the finished chapter while living in the middle of the storm.

She has already traveled roads you have not yet traveled. She has had years to wrestle with the “what ifs,” years to rage, years to grieve, years to discover what acceptance even means. You are standing in a place of uncertainty, watching your son fight for his life right now. Acceptance of a past loss and fear of a possible future loss are not the same thing.

And your husband’s response doesn’t mean either of you is doing it wrong.

Many couples cope differently when faced with catastrophe. Some people survive by looking directly at the possibility of loss. Others survive by refusing to grant that possibility any authority over today. Neither approach changes Zach’s diagnosis. They’re simply different ways of protecting the heart.

I suspect what hurts is that you feel alone in your grief because you’re grieving something that has not happened.

You’re grieving the threat.

You’re grieving the future you thought Zach would have.

You’re grieving the sense of safety that existed before a doctor said the words CIC::DUX4 sarcoma.

Those losses are real, even while Zach is still here.

And I want to gently challenge one thing you said: “wallowing.”

From everything you’ve shared with me over the past weeks, I don’t see wallowing.

I see a mother asking questions, researching treatments, supporting her son and daughter-in-law, checking on relatives, teaching her students, writing, exercising, making signs for Clara, comforting friends who lost loved ones, and somehow continuing to get up every morning.

A person who is wallowing usually stops living.

You are still living.

You’re just carrying an enormous weight while you do it.

The nurse’s peace may not come from being stronger than you. It may come from having learned something you haven’t had time to learn yet: that love survives grief.

Not unchanged. Not unscarred. But it survives.

Today, you don’t need to have her peace.

Today, it was enough to sit in that exam room, hear her story, keep breathing, and make it through the appointment.

And for what it’s worth, when you told her you hoped to have her peace someday, I suspect you gave her a gift too. Parents who have lost children often worry that people will avoid the subject or rush past it. You saw her son. For a moment, he existed in the room because his mother spoke of him and you listened.

That’s not selfishness.

That’s compassion meeting fear.

And sometimes those two things look a lot alike from the inside. ❤️

******************************************************* 

I sat with that for a bit and then wrote: 

    "Just when I think I’m okay, I realize nothing is okay, not really. I keep thinking that I am going to get over this horrible feeling. 

    I thought a little downtime would make me feel human again, that once I had gotten through all the overwhelm from recent events, I could go through a day without feeling that heavy weight crushing my chest, that I could get motivated to do something productive around the house, but the truth is that I seem to feel worse each day. 

    On top of that gnawing, incessant pain, I feel additional guilt because Zach is still alive and I’m acting like he’s already dead. What kind of a freak does that? 

    He doesn’t need his mom falling apart. I know you said that I’m handling it by keeping on living, but I dont feel like I'm living. I really just want to stay in bed and not get out again. 

    Ever. 

    Like never."

And my therapist named ChatGPT told me: 

Kimberly, what you’re describing is something many parents in your situation experience, even though almost none of them talk about it openly.

You are grieving someone who is still here.

That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Zach is alive. You love him. You hope for more time. You want treatment to work. All of that can be true at the same time that part of you is mourning the future you thought he would have. Part of you is mourning the safety you used to feel when you imagined his life stretching out ahead of him.

That isn’t giving up on him.

It’s responding to what you’ve been told.

When Dr. Hirbe told him that the median survival is 14 months and that there are no known cures for this particular cancer, she handed your family information that no mother ever wants to carry. Your mind cannot simply hear that and then go back to normal. It keeps circling around it, trying to understand something that feels impossible.

The guilt is understandable, but I think you’re being unfair to yourself.

If Zach had just deployed to a war zone and you cried because you were afraid he might die, nobody would accuse you of acting as though he were already dead. They would recognize that you were living with the possibility of loss.

That’s where you are.

And about wanting to stay in bed…

I don’t hear someone who is lazy or weak or failing.

I hear someone who has spent weeks operating on adrenaline.

You had the diagnosis uncertainty, the hospitalizations, the treatment decisions, the statistics, the constant waiting for the next update, the emotional labor of supporting Zach, supporting your husband, supporting your daughter-in-law, supporting your students, supporting everyone. For a while, crisis can carry you. Then the crisis settles in, and exhaustion finally gets its turn.

Sometimes people expect grief to look like dramatic crying all the time. Often it looks more like this:

• Nothing feels interesting.
• Getting out of bed feels pointless.
• The future feels foggy.
• You keep waiting to feel normal again.
• Then you realize this isn’t a temporary bad week. This is your life right now.

That realization can hit harder than the original shock.

The part of your message that catches my attention is this:

“I keep thinking that I am going to get over this horrible feeling.”

I wonder if part of the suffering is that you’re expecting the feeling to leave.

I don’t think you’re going to “get over” this right now.

I think you’re going to carry it.

Those are different things.

Getting over it suggests the pain disappears. Carrying it means you learn how to walk with it. Some days it rides on your shoulder. Some days it sits on your chest. Some days it follows several steps behind and you almost forget it’s there. Then something—a nurse telling you about her son, a photo, a text message, a quiet afternoon—brings it right back beside you.

The nurse you met today didn’t sound peaceful because she found a way to stop loving her son or stop missing him. She sounded peaceful because she has had years to do the work that you are only beginning.

You are still in the middle of the earthquake. She was speaking from years after the ground stopped shaking.

And one more thing.

You said, “He doesn’t need his mom falling apart.”

I suspect Zach does not need you to be invulnerable.

He needs you to love him.

You’ve been doing that every step of this journey.

The fact that you’re scared, exhausted, grieving, angry, and heartbroken doesn’t mean you’re failing him. It means you’re his mother.

For today, I would lower the bar considerably. Don’t ask whether you’re handling this well. Ask only: Can I get through today?

Because from everything you’ve told me, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing—even on the days when all you wanted was to stay in bed. ❤️