We had a family cruise scheduled for January 2024.
Then Sherry was diagnosed in December, and the calendar split into two parts: before surgery and after surgery.
The cruise landed in the before.
There are versions of this story where a family cancels everything, closes ranks, and waits. That was not Sherry’s version. Her attitude was closer to: if we are doing this, we are going out with a bang.
So we went.
We did not go because the diagnosis was minor. We did not go because nobody understood the risk. We went with the risk fully present in the family conversation. We discuss everything, especially the things that scare us. The surgery was not a forbidden subject packed away while everyone performed vacation.
It came with us.
So did laughter. So did meals together, family conversations, and the strange experience of doing something joyful while knowing a serious procedure was waiting when we returned.
That combination may sound impossible until life asks you to live it.
Fear does not cancel joy as neatly as people imagine. Joy does not prove the fear is gone. They can occupy the same day. Sometimes the most honest thing a family can do is admit both of them are there and refuse to let either one lie about the other.
As a paramedic, I could not entirely turn off the part of my mind that knew why we were concerned. I noticed Sherry. I thought about what had been explained to us. I carried the seriousness with me even when we were laughing.
As her sister, I also understood why she wanted to go.
Sherry had always been focused on the next achievement. School. Career. The next standard she intended to meet and probably exceed. The diagnosis had interrupted a life organized around the future. The cruise gave her a chance to choose the present while the future was uncertain.
That choice affected me.
Before all of this, I was the sister more naturally inclined to celebrate the moment. Sherry was the one thinking three moves ahead. But on that trip, her decision to enjoy what was in front of us was not casual. It was brave in a way my silliness had never needed to be.
She was not becoming me. I was not becoming her. We were beginning to understand each other differently.
I saw that seriousness and joy were not opposites. Sherry could understand exactly what waited at home and still decide to laugh with her family. I could be the playful sister and still remain alert to the weight she was carrying.
We talked about the surgery because it was real. We enjoyed the cruise because that was real too.
Then we came home.
The appointment was still there. The questions were still there. Everything we had discussed moved from the future into the immediate next step.
But we came home together.
When I look back, I do not remember that cruise as denial. I remember it as a family refusing to surrender every good hour in advance.
Sherry’s diagnosis had already taken certainty from us. We were not going to hand it every laugh too.
Basically fine did not exist as a polished philosophy in that moment. It was something we were already practicing: the hard thing was real, the joy was real, and our family was allowed to hold both.
