On February 20th, I went to bed and dreamt I was alone in a theater. It was a magnificent theater. Multistory mahogany walls. Twinkling crystal chandeliers. Modern plush seats. And a red velvet curtain which—as it was rising—was making me uneasy. I did not know what this drama was about. And there would be no intermission.
My unease gave way to anxiety as I felt the entire house convulse and saw its walls erupting into flames. I tried but could not get out of my seat. I was trapped. And I began screaming, “My God, I’m in hell. This is the theatre of hell!” I woke up hitting my head with my open hands—then relieved to realize that this inferno was just a bad dream.
But my heart began to pound, and my scalp burned again like my hair was on fire when I remembered that earlier that day, my husband, at age 35, was diagnosed with advanced, metastatic colon cancer. I realized that my nightmare was a metaphor for our life. The sense of tradition in that hall was like that in our marriage. Those shimmering lights, our little children. The sturdy comfortable seats, our careers. And that blood-red curtain, rising at a frenzied pace on a horrific drama. One without pause. Fraught with fear and alarm. Sometimes anticipation and relief. But mostly terror and captivity. Like a roller coaster ride through hell.
There were so many tumors in my husband’s liver, it was as if someone threw a handful of pocket change. So said the oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It was a miracle that he showed no symptoms. That would not last. So came the second opinion. There is no time for a dress rehearsal. Act One: Resect the primary tumor in his colon. Act Two: Administer rounds of experimental chemotherapy to shrink the dozen or so malignancies multiplying and embedded and growing throughout his liver. No one uttered a line about Act Three.
In that silence, I understood that it was showtime and my part in this production became clear. I must withstand the heat. This could be a drama, not a tragedy; he did nothing to occasion this inferno. It could just as easily be me in that metal tube of an MRI careening into the tunnel of foreboding. So, I must act as my husband’s caretaker – and his understudy, called to the parenting and professional roles he starred in and played masterfully until just hours ago.
I can manage the house. I can lower the lights and silence the phones when he – we – need rest and privacy backstage. I can divert our children’s eyes when the precipitous drops nauseate him and the pain is on his face—that young and out-of-place-in-this-anguish-face, so prematurely pushed up against his mortality, with yellowing eyes wide open his incomplete legacy as his still-dark hair blows off his head in clumps. I can hold all their hands and grab us a giggle in the farcical moments of modern healthcare when our train defies gravity, and we bravely creep upward with the momentum of hope. Hope for a miracle. Hope for a medical breakthrough in time for our time on this run.
I can resolve that my family will ride out this Sturm and Drang as a unit, a reservoir of emotional and physical support and spiritual stability for my husband. We will not melt down. We will not be catapulted from our seats. Our boxcar barreling through hell, with doctors acting as ride operators armed with fire extinguishers, will break—suddenly and without warning, like the inevitable swerves that leave our breath and stomachs behind and send us tilted and sideways around the blind stretches of this … improvisation.
Facing the pyres, we’ll come to a halt. A hard stop. Remission? Perhaps. For sure, a breath ahead of our preparation for the fierce closing run through the firestorm, its wind bringing down the final curtain on our original cast, our family of four, together, in and on Stage IV.
It’s early mourning on February 21st, and my eyes are open wide as my nightmare takes center stage.
Lisa Bernard is an encore-career author. This piece was published in the 2025 Connecticut Literary Journal and earned Second Place for flash nonfiction in the Connecticut Press Club’s Communications Competition. Keep in touch!
https://lisabernardwriting.substack.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572639054064
www.LisaBernard.WordPress.com.