Page 40 of The Words We Lost

At her honest reflection, something expands in my chest, and I’m suddenly unable to hold back the words I wanted to say when I first saw her in the hotel basement. “I’m sorry, Wendy. I should have come sooner to check on you. Cece would be so ashamed if she knew I waited ten months to—”

“No.” Wendy lays her hand over mine, gives a soft shake of her head. “Cece wasn’t naïve to your pain, Ingrid. When we made the final decision to go ahead with her surgery, we discussed the different scenarios and outcomes at length. Apart from me, it was you she worried over most. She knew, given the circumstances, that it would be extremely difficult for you to come back here without some real hope to hold on to. She never wanted to add to your trauma of losing your father the way you did.”

At her words, my mind slams to a complete stop and then slowly begins to crawl backward. I wait until I can form a question without any trace of accusation in my voice. “I’m not sure what you mean by the final decision to go ahead with her surgery. Didyou... know the odds she was facing beforehand?” In the letter Cece had prepared for her lawyer to read to her closest friends and family after the services, Cece took full ownership and responsibility of the decision to go ahead with the surgery despite the heightened risks many of us knew nothing about.

Wendy exhales through her nose and seems to consider her next words carefully. “Yes, I did.” She eyes her uneaten plate of food. “And even now, only a small handful of people know the details of those last few days. Everything happened so quickly.”

“Joel?” I ask, terrified of the answer, of learning that once again he’d kept vital information from me.“Is he one of them?”

“No, no. Not Joel. Although I owe him a sit-down much like this one in the very near future. I made a commitment in my prayer journal to talk to him after this last weekend was over.” She doesn’t expound on that statement any more, but it’s not hard to connect the dots for myself. Joel would have been devastated to learn there was counsel over this decision he wasn’t invited to. “Just my brother and Patti and the neuro team. And now a couple of trusted girlfriends in my grief group know the details, but only after the fact. That’s actually why I started attending group in the first place. The guilt I had over that last week of her life was...”

Her sentence trails off, but my mind doesn’t want to fill in the blanks this time. I’m still too lost, still too rattled to assume anything on my own. “What happened?”

Wendy takes a moment as if trying to decide which path to take, and I’m begging her with my eyes to take the one I need most: the truth, even if it hurts.

“Please,” I say. “I want to understand.”

“When Cece first told you about the migraines and her initial diagnosis, we were all very hopeful about her prognosis. The tumorseemed to be growing slowly and her surgeon was optimistic about the procedure and her recovery, despite the odds associated with any brain operation.”

I nod, remembering when I’d met Cece in Oregon at the cabin where she’d told me of her prognosis. My shock. My fear. My utter helplessness. Though she’d kept me updated on her prescriptions, appointments, scans, and eventual surgery date, I’d spent hours researching everything I could about her specific tumor—the grade and placement in particular, and then matching her case to the testimonials of people who not only survived, but thrived after recovery.

I was in no way prepared to hear Joel’s voice on the phone that September afternoon.

I was in no way prepared to hear the same words he’d spoken to me four years prior.

Wendy continues. “Early on, back when we thought her headaches were regular migraines, she could go weeks without having an episode—noticing they’d come on more often when she worked on screens and her eyes were more strained. Her doctor said it likely had to do with the light.” She exhales slowly. “But the closer we got to her surgery date, the migraines were coming on far more often, and when they did, they were debilitating. It’s why she eventually moved in with me again.”

I knew Wendy had been helping her quite a bit, but I certainly hadn’t known she was living here. Our video calls had become less and less frequent as Cece preferred the ease of voice texting, saying she was too tired or too homely-looking to be on video. But I’m guessing there was more to it now.Ingrid, there is nothing new to see. I’m the same, just paler than usual with frizzier hair.

“In the countdown of those last two weeks,” Wendy continues, “she spent more time in the recliner in my living room than anywhere else. She could angle herself however she needed to in order to relieve the pressure in her head. It’s where she often chose to sleep, too—when she slept, that is. But many nights all she wanted to do was walk, be outside, write. I’d worry about her, of course, but youknow how she was.” She huffs a half-laugh. “She needed to explore and imagine. Sometimes she’d walk all the way to her cottage with her notebook in hand and then call me to come pick her up when she was ready to come back.” Her smile slips, sobers. “Sometimes it was hard to remember she was as sick as she was.”

The revelation causes the tip of my nose to tingle. I know what she means. Cece was sending me ridiculous memes just twenty-four hours before she was rolled into that operating room in Seattle. Only an hour after our final text exchange, I’d paced my office, too distracted by the clock to be productive in any way for the next seven hours. I hadn’t wanted to sit at home alone. But the office wasn’t exactly a comfort, either. Barry and Chip had popped their heads in on the half hour, asking for news, until the last time when Barry came in to find me crumpled on the floor, unable to breathe.

I push the dark memory aside and focus my attention on Wendy.

“Just four days before her surgery, during her final scans, everything changed.”

I press my fingertips to the icy condensation of my water glass, having no intention of drinking from it.

“The aggressiveness of her tumor since her previous scan was a shock to her neuro team. It’s possible it had something to do with the medicine she was receiving to shrink it prior to surgery, but no one really knows for sure.” She clears her throat, swallows. “But what they did know was that a difficult procedure had now graduated to a nearly impossible one in only a matter of weeks. Her team sought other opinions, of course, but the consensus was the same: The tumor needed to be removed, not only to relieve her migraines and save her gross motor skills, but her life.” She lifts her glass to her lips, her voice trembling. “There were limited trial drugs available if we waited, but there was no guarantee, and if we waited much longer, the tumor would be inoperable. We were given four days to decide.”

I knew from my many dates with Google that the odds of survival were affected by grade, placement, and the aggressiveness of the tumor, but I hadn’t been told those stats had changed. I hadn’t beentold she was making the most difficult decision of her life during those last four days. “You wanted her to wait.”

“I did.” Her cheeks glisten. “I wanted to believe there would be a new trial or a new drug or ... a miracle.”

My own tears climb and climb and climb until they’re forced to teeter over the edge of my lash line and fall. I have no words. No thoughts in my head other than one: At the age of twenty-six, my best friend had an impossible choice to make. But it was hers to make.

“She made me promise not to share our most recent information with anyone outside her aunt and uncle, and that was only because she knew how much I’d need their support in the days leading up to the surgery. And I did. I still do.” The last sentence hitches on a sob, and I know it’s only right for me to reel this conversation back in, protect her fragility, and honor Joel’s request to keep the light inside her from extinguishing. But my tongue feels as if it’s forgotten how to form words. “She didn’t want this decision to be pinned on anybody but herself. Nor did she want this diagnosis to define her life or her relationships.” Wendy releases a quivering breath. “And she certainly hadn’t wanted the media involved. Unfortunately, there was no controlling them.”

I think back to the news stories, to the click-bait articles, to the independent YouTuber who went viral with nearly every fact wrong about her life when he reported from the beach under her cottage. But by the way Wendy remains quiet, I know there must be more to it than what I knew from living nine hundred miles south.

“Cece and I went round and round on what to do, asking hard questions to medical professionals and seeking counsel from our pastor. All the while, my daughter’s odds of surviving weren’t getting any better, and I could do nothing to change them....”

Wendy is crying openly now, and I’m the one who takes her hand in mine this time. I’m the one who squeezes it gently the way she’s done with me on dozens of occasions. And somehow, when I open my mouth, the words are there, waiting for me. “You honored her,Wendy. It was an impossible decision. And...” I close my eyes, shudder a breath. “It was hers to make.”

Wendy lifts her head to meet my gaze. “That’s one of the things I repeat to myself every morning after my prayer time on the beach. It was hers to make, mine to support, and God’s to control.” She unlocks our hands and reaches for my face, holds my chin. “If you could only know how much she wrestled over what to say to you, and how and when she should say it ... I promise you’d never doubt her intentions for you. You are her sister in all the ways that matter, Ingrid. She wouldn’t be ashamed of you coming up here when you did, she would be proud of you.”

My face starts to crumple, but Wendy’s grip holds firm. “In the same way I wouldn’t have been ready to see God’s promise to me by turning His collection of ocean tears into art three months ago, I’m not sure you would have been ready to visit me any sooner than tonight. You needed time. We all did. So if you can forgive me for not telling you all the facts of her surgery sooner, then I think we should both practice letting go of the guilt that’s not ours to hold on to.”

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