Shhh… Grandma Can’t Know I Have Cancer
Keeping the biggest secret of my life
Oh, shit, Grandma Armanda will freak out, I thought, as soon as I got the cancer news.
Grandma Armanda — who is almost 90-years-old.
Grandma Armanda — who lived through World War II as a child and the Portuguese Colonial War while raising her five children.
Grandma Armanda — who, in the last 20 years, lost her middle daughter to an unknown illness, then her eldest son to a car crash, and then her husband to a heart attack.
Grandma Armanda — who, every time we talk, says, “My grandchildren are the only thing I have left.”
Grandma Armanda — who constantly asks about my health and goes into crisis mode when I have a minor cold.
So yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about adding my incurable cancer to her pile of miseries.
I first told the news to my aunt Nanda and asked her if she could speak to grandma.
“Let’s not tell her,” she said. “She’s old. She won’t understand the nuances of your cancer and the treatments. She’d only worry.”
Phew, I thought.
As her youngest daughter, Nanda had known my grandma for over 60 years, 20 of those living under the same roof, so I happily deferred to her when it came to handling grandma. If she thought the entire family could keep this big secret from one person and that it was the right thing to do, who was I to argue? Besides, grandma’s ancient. For the last five years, every time I visit, she pushes her old books and glassware on me because she can “feel death coming.” If her day is coming, why bother? I could wait her out. It was the easier option.
So we didn’t tell her.
My grandmother did know that I had some lung issues — I’d shared that with the entire family before discovering it was stage IV lung cancer. So after the diagnosis, I told her that the lung issues were “under control” and “not a big deal,” which was a bit of an understatement. She asked about it a few more times on the phone, but I kept changing the subject, and eventually, she stopped asking.
She never stopped asking about my health, though.
“How is your health?” she’d ask at the beginning of each routine monthly call.
Blood would rush to my head, and my mind would go into a frenzy, Fuck fuck fuck. Does she know? No, she can’t know. Otherwise, she’d say something. This is what she always asks. Just act normal. Normal normal normal.
“I’m fine,” I’d answer after a few seconds. “Everything is perfectly fine.”
“Be sure to always wear a jacket when you leave the house, so you don’t get sick!”
A jacket won’t do me much good, my brain would retort.
“Yes, I will,” I’d say. “Thanks.”
“YOUR health is the only thing that matters to me.”
Heart drop.
My health, the only thing that mattered in her life, was shit. And she had absolutely no idea. And I couldn’t tell her.
Every time she called, it was harder to say, “I’m fine.” I hung up feeling like a fraud.
Two years go by, and my grandmother is still alive and well. In the meantime, I’ve been through three failed cancer treatments, and I see my time coming near. I can hide the treatments, but I can’t hide death. If I die before her, she’ll not only be crushed that her granddaughter died but she’ll be crushed that I hid my highly deadly disease from her — such a shitty thing to do.
My current chemotherapy treatment makes me lose my hair. This is a problem because Christmas is coming up, and I’m not a good enough liar to convince anyone I’m in a punk band. If Grandma Armanda sees my bald head when I come for my biannual visit, I’m pretty sure she’ll put two and two together.
I go to Google and type How to tell grandparents I have cancer. However, all the hits are about How to tell children their grandparents have cancer. Yet another proof that my situation is the inverse of the natural course of things. And if even Google doesn’t know how to tell grandma, it seems like a bad idea.
“You should tell her,” my therapist says during our weekly appointment. “Then you can talk it through. You can make the most out of the time you have left. It might even improve your relationship.”
It’s what I want and don’t want to hear. It’d be great to get rid of this guilt, but I don’t want to deal with my grandmother constantly calling me to ask about the cancer and telling me how much she worries about it.
My therapist prepares me with tips to avoid disaster in such a conversation. I should ask a family member to tell her first and only talk to her after she’s had a bit of time to process. I should ask how much she wants to know before giving more details. I should explain that she can help me by being positive. I should tell her that I want to build good memories with her. Got it.
I convene with my sister. I tell her I think it would be better for our relationship to tell grandma the truth, and everything else my therapist told me.
“Yeah, but it’s Grandma Armanda,” she says. “It wouldn’t help your relationship. She’d be even more miserable than she already is!”
“I guess you’re right…”
“And on top of that, Aunt Bita just died,” she reminds me. This was my grandma’s THIRD lost child. “It’s the worst possible time.”
Of course, she’s right. I need something to cover the baldness, to cover the truth.
I buy a wig that looks similar to my former hair. Still, it’s not perfect. It’s fuller than my hair has been in years, there are tiny hairs sticking out in weird places, and the hairs on the back feel like barbed wire.
I’m freaking out. But I don’t want to miss the chance to visit my grandmother when it might be the last. I have to take the opportunity.
The day of the visit to my grandmother comes. I get the wig out and comb it like my life depends on it. I do my best to get all the knots out, but the barbed wire in the back remains.
I imagine all sorts of wig-uncovering scenarios I’ve seen in the movies. She’ll caress my head and make the wig fall off. Or she’ll touch the barbed wire and go, “Wait a minute… Are you wearing a wig?” Or a breeze will go through the apartment and blow the wig away. Or I’ll fall. And then I’ll wish I’d just been honest with my grandmother, instead of her finding out this way. And then we’ll cry together.
When I arrive at her home, my uncle, the youngest of her five children, opens the door. He lives with grandma, and he’s aware of the decision not to tell her. I plan to, later on, sneak into the balcony to whisper him my updates out of grandma’s ears, as usual.
I look inside the living room and see my grandmother in her pale blue pajamas, covered in a blanket, sitting on the fainted floral-print pink couch. She doesn’t go outside anymore — walking is a struggle. She doesn’t even cook anymore, which is something she used to be so proud of. And so she sits on that couch all day, in that tiny living room, staring at the yellow walls covered in old portraits and memories, agonizing over those who died and those who might die.
Grandmother hugs me and doesn’t touch my hair. So far, so good.
“So, how is your treatment going?” my uncle nonchalantly asks as I hang up my coat.
I freeze. My grandma is right next to him.
Maybe she didn’t hear it? I think / hope / pray.
“What treatment?” she asks my uncle. “Is something wrong with Lara?”
Fuck. I’m already breaking my therapist’s first rule to avoid disaster, “Only talk to her after she’s had a bit of time to process.”
“Yeah… Uh…” I mumble, my eyes ping-ponging between grandma and uncle.
All the right things the therapist told me to say run away like politicians saying, “No comment!”
“Well,” my uncle says in a soft voice. He is sitting next to her, looking her in the eye. “You know that Lara has a lung problem, right?”
She nods.
“So, for this lung problem, she’s getting treatment,” he continues. “And this treatment makes her bald.”
My grandmother looks at me. I imagine her analyzing the wig, thinking, I knew there was something weird with her hair!
“Is it chemotherapy?” she asks.
“It’s a treatment that is like chemo,” he answers.
“Is it cancer?”
“It’s a lung problem.”
I nod, unable to explain it any better. I’m relieved grandma finally understands there’s something wrong, even if she’s not super clear on what it is. However, as my uncle speaks, she looks at me with pity and fear, making me feel awful.
After this short exchange of words, she changes the subject to her childhood.
OK, not so bad, I think. Grandma didn’t start crying and saying how miserable her life was. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to tell her.
Shortly after, my aunt Nanda arrives for a visit after having been Christmas gift shopping. She is the one who initially told me not to tell grandma, and she has no idea that we just spilled the beans.
“Oh, you must be so happy that your granddaughter came to visit you!” she tells my grandmother as she sits on the couch next to her and opposite me.
“Well, I’m happy my granddaughter came,” grandma says. “But I’m sad that my granddaughter is sick.”
My aunt, the most talkative person I know (her family nickname is word machine gun), gets quiet. Having just come from the mall, surprise cancer talk with mom was probably the last thing on her mind.
“That’s not her real hair,” my grandmother continued, pointing at me. “It’s a wig.”
I feel like I’m in a soap opera or a scooby-doo episode, uncovered for the fraud I’ve been for the last two years towards my grandmother, “That’s not the real Lara. It’s a cancer patient!”
My aunt then switches to her usual word machine gun mode. She talks about how many people get cancer these days and how even if you don’t have cancer, you might die at any time. I don’t think this comforts my glass half empty grandmother, but you can’t expect a great speech from someone who was just thinking about which box of chocolates to buy for the neighbor who laughs too loud.
When I hug my grandmother goodbye, I feel her weight heavier than usual. For once in her life, she doesn’t say, “Stay healthy,” so I don’t have to lie.
It feels good just to say goodbye.
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