Resilience…It’s What’s for Dinner
My late husband Ken had cancer three times before I met and fell in love with him in 2001. As a teen, he had his left leg amputated below the knee to stop the cancer’s advance from his foot. He wasn’t anything I imagined an amputee to be, though admittedly, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. My great aunt’s husband was an amputee—in a wheelchair throughout my entire memory. He was a non-compliant diabetic, from what I recall hearing. But Ken was nothing like him.
When I met him at a neighborhood bar, sparks flying between us, I had no idea he was wearing a prosthetic. In long pants, he was just a handsome, funny flirt. When he introduced me to his surprise prosthetic, he didn’t flinch. And, to my surprise, neither did I. He was surrounded by an outline of glitter. He sparkled. And he sparkled most when he looked at me. (If I sparkled, I’m sure the show was prettiest when I looked at him.)
Throughout our decade together, I saw him do something every single day that I didn’t have to do. He had to fight. He had to work harder than anyone to live and to move, refusing to be defined by what he didn’t have. He often said his day mimicked the evolution of man: in the morning, he crawled to the coffee machine, then the shower, where he hopped on one foot, maintaining his balance until finally putting on his prosthetic to become bipedal. Relying on one knee for so long took its toll. I heard the cracks; saw the pained pursing of lips; the exhaustion that overtook him some evenings when falling into bed.
But he got up and did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next. How easy my life felt compared to his. How guilty I felt for feeling like I had any hardships that compared. How much it hurt to see him when he struggled—which in all honesty, wasn’t often. And how very much he did not need or appreciate pity. So, along with the love for him that grew every day, so did my respect.
When his cancer returned, we hoped a radical hemipelvectomy would have done what his teenage amputation had done: buy us a decade or more. He endured an invasive surgery that offered no guarantees, but three weeks later—less his entire left leg and pelvis—he was up and at ‘em with a walker. He was a Weeble. He wobbled, but he never fell down.
He pushed forward with incredible focus, intention, and humor. It’s what anyone who knew him came to expect of him. He was the embodiment of resilience. He taught me so much just by being and living fully as himself. When times get tough in my life, he’s still the beacon I look to because his glitter still sparkles.
Ron Stempkowski is the author of The Luck We Carry: Love, Loss, and the Stories That Shape Us, a memoir-in-essays about learning to move with grief instead of moving on. If this story resonated, you can grab a signed copy—complete with a handwritten note—at ronstempkowski.com, or get your copy wherever books are sold. And if you'd like more stories like this one, join the journey and get them straight in your inbox.