The stump had been laying in my backseat, harmless, yet powerful, and weirdly banned in the United States for various boring and yet I’m sure important reasons that have to do with the protection of native wildlife. Ironically the same species grows in the Arizona desert - Mother Nature does not understand or respect man-made borders.
But they said that only the Mexican Musaro had healing power. And it wasn’t just something that I believed, it was something I knew. You see, I had crossed a Musaro stump about 3 years ago without a problem. The border agent asked what the hell the long piece of cactus in my trunk was and I was honest that it was intended to be made into tea, to help beat the cancer that my sister-in-law’s father was currently fighting.
I was allowed to pass with it then, and soon found out that it actually worked. There were many things going on simultaneously that contributed to my sister-in-law's father eradicating his cancer, including the typical chemo, change in diet, holistic treatment, but also the drinking of the Musaro tea, which was made by boiling pieces of the cactus in water. The man is currently alive and healthy.
So the morning in the summer of 2019 that I read the email from my former writing colleague, Matthew, the one in which he told me he had stage IV cancer, I burst into tears. We had been working together on marketing projects for 2 years. Mainly remote, but we had met in person a few times to ideate and brainstorm and connect. I knew what a great writer he was. I knew that his wife was pregnant, and I knew that he was only 40 years old.
Just a few days before, we had been talking about email campaigns and click-bait article headlines. It all seemed so stupid now.
In my email reply, I apologized for the shittiness of life that I couldn’t understand and which I, nor any of us, had any control over. All I could do was write, “that sucks. No but it more than sucks, that’s devastating. Why you? Fucking life is not fair. WTF!!!!”
That night, I sloppily wrote in cursive in my journal. I look back at the pages now, seeing the crumpled paper and the blotches where the ink ran as the tears hit the page. I’d had a few glasses of wine, so I was incredibly emotional.
“Who cares about a marketing campaign to sell soap or software? We are writers. And yet we’ve had to take on marketing jobs to live, while our creative sides begin to die, and then one day the doctor will tell you that you are actually going to die more quickly, and all of a sudden, everything but the writing seemed so senseless.”
The next day, I visited a beautiful old church in Rouen, France. There was a prayer box, and for two euros, you could write a prayer on a post-it. I put in 10 euros in the donation and wrote one for him to beat cancer. And I thought of the Musaro.
As soon as I got home I wrote him an email: "please don’t think I am crazy, or this is ‘woo-woo’ but I know about a special cactus in Mexico and I am going to bring it to you." He replied, in good spirits, that he was open to anything and was going to try a combination of holistic and western therapies.
The summer went on, and he continued working through his first chemotherapies, updating us on the days he was too weak to work, updating us on the birth of his son, sending pictures of a healthy, bouncy beautiful little baby with a poof of fire-red hair.
The life that was beaming out of the precious little boy was so contrasted with the life that was slowly leaving his father. But Matthew tried, for so very long, to keep a normal routine. And we, his colleagues and employers, wanted to give him every chance to feel normal, like cancer wasn’t going to rob him of everything he knew. There is some hope in the routine because then its not the cancer that defines you.
You are still you. He was still Matthew: a brilliant writer, a new father, a husband, a colleague, a friend, a son…
There was hope in the air. And in the winter of 2019 I returned from France and traveled to Mexico, bought a Musaro, and intended to cross the border on December 25th. But they would not let me pass.
I should have hid it, should have smuggled it, could have paid a fine if I had been caught. In the end, I know that the Musaro could not have changed things - maybe given him more time?
So I regretfully emailed him that I was not successful, and I would try to see what else could be done and other holistic therapies that I knew about. That same month, he sent an email to our entire team, with the subject line: “See you in six months”
He was going to focus on his treatment, and on his family. We all cheerfully replied with messages of hope and love. We all donated to his GoFundMe.
I looked up our last email exchange, in March of this year. He had reached out to see how we were doing given the pandemic. I replied by letting him know we just had this crazy idea to do drive-in concerts on our property and had just done the first one. He let me know that his wife was working from home now and the virus had interrupted his chemo but all good.
So when I got the update this month that things were worse, that the chemo wasn’t working, that it was time to go home in hospice and wait, I cried. I stared in disbelief at the words he wrote in his update “acceptance is my best choice” “heartbreaking I won’t get to see some of you again” “or have a last coffee at Little Dom’s”, I was overwhelmed with grief and anger that this even happened.
So how do I reply to that, given his update? Hey, nice knowing you? Hey, good luck wherever you go next?
It seemed so wrong, at least via email. However remote we had worked, we still talked almost every workday for two years, collaborated on projects, brainstormed at some in-person meetings, shared photos of our children, shared our favorite books...he was a human being and when working remotely, we tend to forget that, behind our GIFS and avatars and emojis.
So, I decided I would mail him a letter, along with a copy of my favorite book, The Freethinker’s Prayer Book, one that I picked up in India 7 years ago. I mailed it to him in hopes he would find some peace within the words. I procrastinated mailing it, as I do with most things. I also mailed him some postcards of our concert. I thought, perhaps there is a chance for him to come to a show with his family? He could stay in his car…
For several days after I mailed it, I pushed it to the back of my mind, as we tend to do with overwhelming but important things. I was hoping that somehow I would hear back, perhaps via email or text, and I wanted to give him space.
On Monday morning, I got an update. It was an update from the GoFundMe page that I had donated to in support of his medical expenses and other bills so that he and his wife could just stay home and focus on healing and the new baby.
My stomach fluttered, and I didn’t want to click. But it was there - the update. He had passed away on Sunday morning, at home.
I will never know if he got my letter, or looked at the book I sent, or saw the postcards. An email would have been faster. I could have at least told him that I cared about him and was glad to have known him. That I am sorry that, at the age of 40, he was robbed of living the beautiful life he had been creating with his wife, and his son.
I had waited because I was scared. I had waited because I was hoping that things would get better. I waited because it didn’t seem real that he was not, in fact, coming back in 6 months. I found myself scrolling through old emails, looking up chats, reading some of his articles, digging for projects that had been put on hold while he was away. I didn’t want to remove him from our Slack, from our Asana, or delete his workplace email, or go into his work inbox to find important information and google docs and links…
We all deal with grief differently. The impact was not just the loss of a colleague. It was the fact that a wife had lost her husband. A baby lost his father. And Matthew, so bravely, lost the opportunity to live so many milestones in his life.
I thought of his legacy as a writer - something that I could relate to. He had been published in various outlets, he was creative. His stories will live on. His son will live on. His emails are still in my inbox, the ones full of hope and healing hurting the most. And all we can do is be thankful for the good people that come into our lives, and remember their stories after they are gone.
This is beautiful Jacqueline... so sorry for your loss. I feel I got to know him a little through your writing. Thank you for sharing your friend— and in such a relatable way.
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