Chapter 37

Dear Diary,

You know how sometimes one simple thing will trigger a world of emotions? The most recent thing for me was the Netflix adaptation of the book From Scratch starring Zoe Saldaña & Eugenio Maestrandrea….all I felt was emotion.

Let me take a step back and explain. I went to Munich for work. Munich is fucking incredible!!! I absolutely loved it. From the beautiful churches, historic sights, clean crisp air, to the effortless public transportation, I honestly felt safe walking around alone (there was one little sketchy thing but I’ll get to that later) and duh…Bavarian food. The one thing I didn’t enjoy was all the damn walking but that’s because I’m out of shape and I was carrying my big ass backpack the whole time. To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to going because it was supposed to be cold and we all know I don’t do cold. I also didn’t wanna go because I had a different idea of what it would be. I didn’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t it.

Are Germans super friendly to Americans? Not exactly but nobody was flat out rude or disrespectful. Did I have some trouble figuring out where I needed to go? Kinda but it’s all just part of the adventure. The Seahawks and Buccs are playing the first NFL in Munich and the NFL took over Odeonsplatz…this is a central square where people congregate and I felt comfortable. Being in a place so foreign but surrounded by all of the 32 NFL helmets made me feel right at home. Munich is someplace I’d love to come back to with Jimmy and explore more. It will take some convincing because there are other European countries he wants to see but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t going to be my last visit.

Oh before I forget about that one weird encounter….I was walking alone into an open building and this guy and walked past each other. He doubled back and said, “Excuse me miss. You have a very lucky face.” I replied back with, “Thank you” and turned away. He followed up with “You will have something’s good in 1-3 months passing but you think too much.” To which I replied back thank you and walked away. I know he was probably a scam artist trying to walk away with a few euros but not today sir, not today. Maybe I do have a lucky face, maybe I don’t but I am a lucky girl for sure with good skin.

Anyway back to the beginning…I watched the entire 8 episodes of From Scratch on the plane ride home….if you haven’t seen it yet…WATCH IT! I had no idea wtf I was gonna watch but I love Zoe Saldaña and thought ok 8 episodes will kill tons of time on the plane.

Synopsis: Girl meets boy. They fall in love, overcome challenges and have an epic story.

Spoiler alert…if you don’t want to know more, don’t keep reading….I’m warning you!!!!

Amy & Lino meet in Florence and fall in love. Basic stuff from 99% of movies right? Well Gel & Jimmy met in a club in Downtown San Jose and also fell in love. In this parallel each of us has also had dreams of careers and found ourselves unhappy in work but throughout the sad and thankless jobs we had a true partner. One to help us continue pushing, one to be better for…and just when you think you’re hitting a high the dreaded diagnosis comes…Cancer.

I felt so many emotions watching this. I was so proud of the family for coming together to help them, watching them decide on fertility options, going through treatment and the anxiety of post treatment scans, watching his struggle and strength, watching her be his rock while trying to sort out her own shit. I felt all of it as his health slowly deteriorated and he passed on and then finding the love come full circle.

I cried during the whole fucking movie on United 195 from MUC to SFO. I cried tears of happiness, joy, sorrow and pain. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. I was so fortunate for my diagnosis and treatment options.

As I watched Lino go through his treatments and surgery I started watching this from a completely different lens. I only know cancer from the patient side…I was nervous because I didn’t know what they would find inside me but I would be unconscious and I had implicit trust and faith in my surgical team…I did the research and found the best team for me. I knew I would be ok….Back to the movie, I saw the anguish Amy felt while waiting for the surgery to finish. I watched as she was lost for hours, would he survive the procedure, would they have good margins, would they get all of the tumor? I watched all of this and thought to myself, fuck is this what Jimmy went through? Is this what my family went through? Because I had both surgeries in a surgical center during COVID nobody could even be there to wait for me. Jimmy was roaming the streets of SF while the rest of my family waited with baited breath to get the good news. I put myself in their situation and thought about how I would feel if it were my husband…it felt like shit.

Eventually he goes into remission and they adopt a little girl. For years they are living a beautiful and happy life. They don’t take things for granted and want peace in their lives.

Then MY biggest fear happens…the cancer is back and it’s metastasized aggressively and is no longer treatable…back to Gel/Lino and Jimmy/Amy. As a patient there hits a point where you come to terms with what’s happening within you and you accept it and move on or you squander what little time you have left. Watching him tell his wife and explain to his child he knows he’s dying was one of the hardest things for me. I think that’s another reason why I haven’t looked into adoption or pursued IVF…I don’t want to leave my child motherless. I know damn well I would be an incredible mom! I would be the mom who bakes for every bake sale, the mom who goes on every field trip…I would be the typical PTA mom, the dance mom, the sports mom…I would be THE mom every kid wanted. I have so much love in me and have so much to give to a child…All of that is focused on Kimchi and my nephews and nieces…I don’t know if I have it in me to actually pursue motherhood to an adopted or biological child. I think it would selfish for me to have a child. Am I doing this for myself so I can live out a dream I once wanted or am I selfish because I don’t want to leave a kid behind? I’m still not able to think past myself. I think it’s selfish of me to not give a child this life I would be able to offer…I’m in this limbo of I’m selfish either way but if I have to pick between someone who I would love deeply versus the person I love most, I would pick Jimmy. I pick protecting him from the same tragic future of being a single parent. Is it selfish to deny him the opportunity to be a parent? I don’t know that I’ve truly denied him…if he expressed interest in it I would continue pursuing options and do the research. I would love to have my own child but I don’t know if that’s supposed to be in my story. I’m perfectly content with where we are. From day 1 we have always said, if it happens, great, if it doesn’t happen also great. My husband lost his only parent to cancer. I can’t allow my child to do the same. I can’t leave him with a kid to experience the same heartbreak. He saw his mom as cancer took away the most vibrant person he knew and turned her into a shell. He watched as cancer took over his personal super hero, he knew only knew her as an incredible force and knew her grit…losing her was the biggest obstacle he’s ever faced. He never got one last goodbye. She took her last breath the night before he was supposed to see her. Navigating the world, unknown future and raising himself and younger brother without her must have brought him to his edge. But he was resilient, he persevered and is the epitome of life knocks me down, I’m gonna come back even stronger. To this day I know he struggles with his loss. Grief of this magnitude doesn’t ever stop, it doesn’t go away, but it does somewhat get replaced with other happy memories.

I put myself in the position as Lino…wtf would happen if my cancer came back and it took my life? That would absolutely break my husband. While losing his mom brought him to a breaking point he managed to keep it together. Losing me in the same way…I think he would lose his faith and become someone else…I think he would be so full of grief, rage, anger and hate. He would no longer be the jovial guy that everyone loves. How do you lose the two people you love the most to the same awful disease? While I was going through all of this I never stopped to think about how he truly felt, what was really going through his mind, what fears he had…I just didn’t think about any of that until today. It took a damn movie for me to realize the pain he was in. I apologized to him and said I’m sorry for not thinking about him in the way I should have.

He has said time and time again it’s not just me going through this…I never really thought about how this would impact him. Sure I knew on a surface level but the profound level of oh shit this is happening to me all over again wasn’t something I was able to truly comprehend. If I’m being honest with myself I know that I wasn’t in a position to be able to look beyond my own experience. Call me selfish all you want because I was…but fuck if it were your life you would be focused on yourself too. I was laser focused on my one and only goal…beat cancer by any means! I did all this research and shared with him but he didn’t seem interested, maybe because it brought too much pain for him, maybe he knew I was gonna do what I wanted regardless, maybe he just didn’t care and all he wanted was for me to be ok…He made it so very easy for me just make decisions and execute that I forgot about his actual feelings. I would ask for opinions but he would say, do what you feel is best, do what you think is right for you…so that’s what I did. I fought for him to not have to feel the pain he had once before. I made decisions so he wouldn’t lose me. But Jesus Christ that movie…those 400 minutes changed my entire perspective…

Thank you Tembi Locke for sharing your memoir. Thank you for allowing your story to be adapted. Thank you for giving me another perspective.

Most importantly thank you James. Thank you for the life we built and are continuing to create. Thank you for cowriting our epic story. I love you…G