Penned April 12, 2025 by Penny Sue Denim
Parking the Prius in the garage, I gather the trio of aristocratic cat portraits from the passenger seat. Each feline poses imperiously. Not at all how I might find our actual cat, Lucy Lion, writhing or languishing on the lounge floor, had she faced the misfortune of becoming the muse of our then-six-year-old daughter with a collection of Victorian doll attire.
A cat in dolls’ clothing. A fitting portrait of my internal posture as I entered our home, knowing that now I alone was tasked with breaking the news about the C-word to our two daughters. The word that had been suspended on a string and held silently between us, my husband and I, for just over a month—and through a long-awaited, but almost-cancelled trip to Disneyland. As parents, we were convinced that nothing good could come from recklessly wielding that word like a mishandled sword amongst the quadripod of our family before we even knew what it entailed.
Returning alone, in early September, from Robben’s initial consult at the cancer clinic an hour away, I had now inherited the agonizing task of dropping that word on my children like a hand grenade. Not just that universally life-scrambling word; I had to bring with it the most devastating of all possible scenarios.
I longed to be back at Disneyland, gazing at Sleeping Beauty’s castle—or better yet, Elsa’s ice cathedral—fantasizing that hell could freeze over, holding the four of us in that moment forever. If only the magic of Disney could have arrested Time in her cruel and relentless march.
If not that, then I longed for a do-over of the flights, departure or return. I revisited my mid-flight fantasy—my darkest desire—birthed in an anticipatory grief I didn’t yet possess the language to name. In this fantasy—No; in this prayer—the plane goes down, precluding the four of us from knowing, experiencing, or feeling the spread of the portentousness evoked when that C-word was spoken to the two of us, anxiously holding hands in the doctor’s office on the last day of July. That fateful day, three days after we moved into our dream home and seven days before we departed on a dreamy trip to Disneyland.
~ ps denim
The B-sides and the Besides
Companion stories from the bewilderness and/or words from others wanderers
🎶 With accompaniment from My Unapologetic Playlist 🎶
The picnic blanket & the bluetooth speaker
Dear reader: Let’s travel the world through each other’s eyes—and then sit down to eat together. Whether wading through grief, exploring equity, trying on theology, navigating the modern dating scene, pressing into parenthood, or taking some other deeply human journey. What we all have in common is that we need each other.
The great thing about digital travel is that here, what you pack in, you don’t have to pack out. You’re encouraged to leave something behind. That’s what builds community.
When you click the cute little ❤️ below, unpack your thoughts in a comment, or give this little story a Restack, it’s like you picked up a souvenir just for me. You can also find me on Notes. Let’s keep exploring together.
I can’t even imagine how difficult that must have been. 💔
Penny, the dressed cat image gives this piece a startling honesty: the outward costume of holding yourself together while everything inside has been made strange, exposed, and unbearably tasked. The hand grenade language captures the impossible cruelty of parenting in anticipatory grief, when love has to choose words that will wound children while still trying to make them feel held. Even the Disneyland memory carries that ache, not as escape, but as the longing to freeze the last version of family life before the diagnosis changed the air around it. I’m grateful for the courage it took to write the part of grief that often feels too dark to admit, especially the desperate wish to spare everyone from knowing what was coming.