I have not told my family that the cancer is back

Dear Delyara, My cancer is back. I have known for nine days. My husband thinks the scan was routine. My children believe I am still in remission because that is the word we celebrated eighteen months ago with champagne and a cake my daughter decorated badly. She is getting married in six weeks. Her dress is hanging upstairs. There are flowers to choose, table plans taped to the refrigerator, messages arriving every hour about shoes and hair and whether Aunt Miriam should sit near the speakers. I cannot make myself place cancer in the middle of all that happiness. My oncologist says treatment should begin soon. I asked exactly how soon. She looked at me before answering because she understood what I was really asking: Can I borrow six weeks from this disease without telling the people I love? My husband has started watching me more closely because I am distracted. Yesterday, our daughter tried on her wedding dress in the living room. Everyone cried when she walked in. I cried because she looked beautiful, because she looked like herself at five pretending a curtain was a veil, and because I was standing there with a body carrying information that would change every face in the room the moment I spoke. She hugged me and whispered, “Mum, please don’t cry, you’ll ruin your makeup.” I laughed. I am terrified that keeping this secret is selfish. I am equally terrified that telling it will turn the last six weeks before her wedding into a countdown nobody asked for.