My husband and I talked about nothing for an entire afternoon

Dear Delyara, My husband has cancer. For the last year, every conversation seems to involve treatment, scans, insurance, medication, fatigue, food, or fear. Yesterday, his appointment was cancelled unexpectedly. We had an empty afternoon. Instead of filling it with another medical task, we went to a diner. We argued about whether the coffee was worse than it used to be. We watched a man parallel park badly. My husband complained about baseball. I told him our neighbor’s dog still hates me. For almost three hours, neither of us said cancer. It was still there. His port was beneath his shirt. His medication alarm went off once. Yet the afternoon belonged mostly to useless conversation. A good day did not mean we received good news. We received no news. For a few hours, illness was simply one fact sitting quietly among many others.