Danny Lesslie's Blog

Walking Her Home

“Do you think I’m dying?” my wife asked me.

I gulped. Not a question I had ever imagined her asking. I tearfully gazed into her beautiful eyes, the same ones I had fallen deeply in love with years before, and I could see the fear. She was coming to terms with the day we never wanted to see. She was looking to me for hope, for rescue, not for confirmation. This question still tears at the fabric of my soul.

I remember the paralysis I felt. In the years before, we had been through nightmare after nightmare on this cancer journey. How was I supposed to answer this question? I quivered. My ears got hot. There was no way I was saying yes—not a chance. I had chosen to hope a long time ago. I sat there internally panicking, seeing the writing on the wall, but I didn’t dare say it. I simply would not give up the idea that she would pull through.

It feels like yesterday when we first met on that pristine bluff in Santa Monica, California. The towering palm trees, the perfect sunsets, the ocean breeze—and this incredible woman walked up to my fitness class. I knew immediately something was different about her. Her eyes captured me. I had butterflies, and we hadn’t even spoken. She held an unmistakable joy within her. I learned her name was Raffi, and when I walked her to her car, my heart sank at the sight of a child seat in the back. She was obviously married or in a serious relationship. But I had to ask about the car seat. She knew what I was really asking, and she told me it was her daughter’s. Apparently, my face went white, and in that moment, everything changed. I was blushing and smitten. She had confirmation I was interested, and within months we were dating, never looking back. It turns out the car seat belonged to her niece.

You should have seen her—she was so powerful and full of grace. She had grown up sprinting and would run with a lean that would make any track coach take a second look. I was constantly mesmerized by her dancing and simply by how she moved in the world. She brought a depth of love and joy into every room she entered. You could feel the temperature change when she walked in. If you were blessed enough for her to aim that love in your direction, there was nowhere else you’d rather be.

She was also not a person to cross. I always laughed when we first had our daughters, because someone might see our family of four and be afraid of me because of my size (6′ 3″ and 275 pounds). She was the one to worry about. When we first started dating, we were in her car, and I reached into her glove-box for something, felt a sharp poke, and pulled out a wooden-handled steak knife. This was one of three in her car. I asked her about them, and she just shrugged and said, “Ya never know.” After all, we did live in Venice, CA at the time. She was quite at home holding her ground, and I loved that about her.

We were in an ice cream shop when the girls were six and seven, and there was this group of teenagers who were clearly drunk, making fools of themselves, cursing and just being disruptive. Raff locked eyes with one of the girls and said, “We all know what’s in your water bottles—you’re not fooling anyone. Stop being so rude.” The whole place stopped. The teenagers snapped back into mannerly behavior. And I just marveled at her ability to cut right through all the noise. Not only was she protecting our girls, but she was protecting all the other kids in the place.

She gave birth to both of our daughters assisted by a midwife without any drugs. With our first daughter, there was a moment I saw Raffi leave her body, and the roar that came out of her during her last push was something I can only equate to a lioness roaring. It was primal and deep, and the room shook. It was startling and awe-inspiring.

When our kids were young, we decided to sell everything we owned, buy an RV, and travel. We left the dream of LA for another dream. There’s a real beauty in camping seaside with everything you own and the sizzling of steaks on the grill. I specifically remember crying at the grill, my heart bursting with gratitude for our life. Waking up to lapping waves and dolphins in central California is hard to beat. We traveled the western part of the United States and ended up in Kansas, which is where my family is located. We lived in that RV for a year and then moved onto a ranch. Raff homeschooled our girls while I managed the ranch. Life was really humming along. We had a herd of alpacas, some ponies, a cow, and a bunch of other animals. We had built a coffee trailer business, and we were loving life.

Then Raff found a growth on her vulva. A nervous trip to the doctor landed her in surgery the next week. I remember waiting nervously in that cold, desolate waiting room. My stomach churned the whole time. After the surgery, the doctor informed me the mass was cancerous, and that I had to tell my wife. Hearing those words made my stomach drop. I almost vomited.

Later that night, Raff woke up at home from the anesthesia. Her whole family had come into town for this and was milling around the house waiting for her to get up. I had been carrying this bomb—the cancer diagnosis—since about 2 p.m. at the hospital. No one except me knew. I couldn’t bear to tell anyone before I told Raff. I was paralyzed at the thought of this conversation. And then, with a sleepy look on her face, she asked, “What did the doctor say?” It still breaks me to this day to think of that moment. Tears burst from my eyes. I just sat down beside her on the bed and said, “It’s cancer.” She was coming to me for rescue, for support, for hope, and all I had to give her was this dagger. I was crushed, and so was she.

Our life exploded.

And then we lost our beloved alpaca, Coffee Bean. She developed a condition common to alpacas, and I found her dead in the barn within weeks of Raff’s diagnosis. This almost broke me. I remember walking back to the house from the barn. I was staggering and gasping for air. How do I tell my wife after this diagnosis? How do I tell my three- and four-year-old daughters? This was the first of a string of goodbyes to some major dreams. We sold the herd of alpacas, the coffee business, and the RV over the course of the next months. We were unknowingly preparing for a firestorm that would take everything from us.

The cancer surged back. What was a small Tic Tac–sized mass in her inguinal crease, where your leg meets your torso, exploded in growth. It was growing by the day, along with our panic. Before we knew it, it was the size of a grapefruit, and it tore through her skin. Raff didn’t want to pursue conventional treatments. Remember the lioness. Well, I sat across from her on our living room floor insisting that she look to chemo and radiation because we were losing the battle. She would not budge.

This moment was one of the biggest turning points in our relationship.

I decided to lay down my sword, my solution-focused perspective, and come alongside her. I could not make her choices. We chose to look at this problem from the same side of the table, and as a result, our marriage became bulletproof. It was about to be catastrophically tested in the coming years. She did eventually decide to pursue conventional treatment, but it was on her terms. And what I learned was that it was very important that we approached cancer as a team, not as adversaries.

We were able to find treatment in Tulsa at a cancer center. Nine weeks of chemo and radiation later, the tumor was gone. We were planning for a major plastic surgery in the coming month when we got notice that the cancer center where the surgery was scheduled was closing. We were scrambling to find a solution for the wreckage that was her hip. Thankfully we were able to find a center in Atlanta that would take over her care.

It was here that Dr. Durden, the plastic surgeon, stopped us in our tracks. He was looking at the wound site from where the tumor had been. He said, “Let’s give it six months. I think it will heal.” Raff and I laughed. Three weeks before, we had been fully on board with a surgery. And now, this man said it was going to heal.

And heal it did. We met back with him after six months, and his comment was, “That’s all God.”

We cried.

I’d been working at the ranch for a few years at this point, and I was fired out of the blue, which left us with no income and no house. My wife was recovering from multiple surgeries, and we had two little daughters whom we homeschooled. We needed to downsize immediately. We ended up throwing everything that would burn onto a bonfire in the backyard because we had nowhere to take it. We had to leave.

Amazingly, the day after our bonfire when we were wondering what would happen to us, an acquaintance gave us a fifth-wheel camper, and another friend called to say they had an RV spot on their property. We could bring our camper, our two dogs, and our kids and live with them for a while. We lived like this for five years—our life constantly up in the air. Everything we held onto for security was stripped away from us repeatedly. We lost a house, jobs, money, people, pets, and things. We were so clearly not in control. But someone was.

We turned to God for hope. We prayed and we asked for help. And an army of people came to our aid. During those years we put up three GoFundMe’s for hundreds of thousands of dollars in care. Whenever we needed help, it came to us in ways we never imagined. The one link to all of them was God in such an undeniable way.

Somewhere along the way Raff commented about how all this beauty had shown up in our lives, and the only attributable reason was cancer. And she was right. I had never thought of a terminal illness as something that could yield something beautiful, but our story showed the best parts of humanity. Yes, it was framed by cancer, but that was so far from the full tale. This is one reason I decided to write our book. Many people will be touched by cancer, and our experience showed me that there were so many blessings along our journey. Raff and I felt that our story was important to share.

Talking about death in your thirties and forties is not something I thought was on my bingo card. But this conversation led to a freedom I never imagined. When Raff and I first talked about this, I was sweaty—so nervous, so uncomfortable. Then we had the talk, and afterward I found I was free to love her now, and I was more focused on my contribution to the present moments in our life. It revealed a beauty that wasn’t so obvious before. Raff came to terms with her mortality, and it freed us to enjoy the moments we had left.

Then everything took a turn, and the writing was really on the wall. This was the end. They say for every day that you are lying in bed with an illness, it takes eighteen days to return to some semblance of normalcy. At this point Raff had been in bed for at least two years. The daily hurdles of this period in our life were treacherous. I would not wish them on anyone. According to the math above, a comeback was going to be thirty-six years in the making. We were too far down the path to return, and that was obvious.

I remember walking back into the room to be with Raff, considering how much longer we had. I was assessing how many days were left. To walk in and spend time with the love of your life when you both know it’s the end has some real teeth. There’s no talking about the weather; the elephant in the room doesn’t leave much space for anything else. In looking back, I realize there is no more sacred calling than walking someone you love home. But it’s gutting beyond belief.

I dreaded the hospice conversation. I remember pacing in my garage for at least a month, daily, running it through in my head. I would go stand out in the garage and cry and pray. I’ve never been so terrified. I couldn’t imagine giving Raff the slightest hint that I had given up on her. It still makes me nauseous to think about it even today. She was getting so weak, and I was so fearful that if she fell, she would spend her remaining days in the hospital—which she was adamantly against.

And then on a Tuesday, I brought it up. And her response still shakes me to this day. I sat down next to her in our living room. “Babe, I need help. I don’t know what to do if you fall.” And she answered with concern for me. She graciously replied, “Babe, I’m concerned about you. I want you to get some rest and have help.” How does this dying woman, in excruciating pain every day for over 1,500 days, focus on me? I still feel the love today. I can’t even talk about it without crying like a baby. I am so blessed to have married such a woman.

She fell that Thursday and passed the following Thursday. This story is much bigger, and together we tell it in our book. We always wanted to write one; we just never got there. After she passed, I paired her words with mine so we could finally tell our story.

I’m no longer afraid of death. I’ve seen love carry on beyond death. I’ve seen joy explode out of my children that came from their mother. I’ve seen God show up in ways I couldn’t even imagine. I’ve seen light come straight out of the darkness. And once you’ve seen that, you can’t keep it to yourself.

Danny Lesslie is an international award-winning author, keynote speaker, widower, and proud girl dad. His book, Thank You, Cancer, received the International Impact Award in Memoirs and weaves together his own reflections, his wife’s journal from her cancer journey, and the divine moments that shaped their story.Thank You, Cancer: A Story of Love, Loss & Hope