This essay is part of “Did ___ Ever Make Anyone Happy?” — a creative nonfiction series by Yu Taguchi.
→ Read the companion essay: Did Chemotherapy Make My Mother Happy?
An Unbeautiful Story of Fighting Cancer
Even now, I sometimes shake my head side to side—no, no, no—like a child throwing a tantrum, and cry.
I asked an AI: “Why is it that only when I think of him and cry, I shake my head like that?”
The AI answered: “It’s instinctive. When faced with a reality they cannot accept, humans shake their heads from side to side, gesturing no. The way a baby refuses food it doesn’t like—turning its head away, no, no. It is a primitive, instinctive movement.”
That’s right. I don’t want him to die.
Since the diagnosis, every time the memory returns, tears come with it, and I shake my head—no, no, no. I have almost never let him see it. Alone in my room, I keep refusing his death.
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When this project is over, let’s go everywhere together. We’ve been too busy to see each other, but now we’ll finally have time—just the two of us.
I miss the days when we said things like that. But then he was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, and that dream died.
“Believe me. It’s real. I don’t want to die.”
Standing before him, I shook my head and cried: “That’s a lie. I don’t believe it!”
He and I were lovers. We also worked together. Running a company is never clean. Before I knew it, I had become involved in the darker side of the business. I felt like his accomplice.
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His cancer was an extremely aggressive blood cancer. He had been a charismatic CEO. As soon as he received the diagnosis, he sold the company.
“I have to protect my employees’ livelihoods, even if I die. But I wanted to keep going…”
His voice was barely a whisper. All I could do was watch him in silence. No words felt like comfort.
He relapsed immediately after the first round of chemotherapy. Then he chose to undergo a hematopoietic stem cell transplant—preceded by a conditioning regimen so brutal it destroys every cell in the body, good and bad alike.
The side effects were beyond anything I could bear to hear. Daily diarrhea. Vomiting. Delirium—a state of clouded consciousness, hallucinations, seeing things that aren’t there. Cognitive decline. Total hair loss. His appearance changed drastically. The LINE messages and phone calls from his sterile room grew increasingly incoherent.
Killing all cells, good and bad—brain cells are no exception. His once gentle temperament changed. He became suspicious. Quick to anger. I wanted to support him, but he screamed at me.
During his treatment, I was afraid of mornings. Reading his LINE messages had become my ritual. “Couldn’t contact you yesterday. Lost consciousness from the chemo.” Each daily report forced me to confront the possibility that he might vanish from this world.
I want to go back to the dream. I don’t want to see reality.
Every morning, in bed, I shook my head—no, no, no—and cried.
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He gradually lost the ability to read anything longer than a few lines. Brain cells, destroyed. He began shouting “I never heard that!” about things said a minute ago. There was no way he could make sound business decisions in that state.
I kept demanding that he resign. “If you’re in this condition, step down as CEO!”
“How can you say something so cruel?!”
He screamed at me, but I didn’t stop. If his wish before the illness was to protect his employees, then at that point, he himself had become a risk to the company.
What if we had just been ordinary lovers? What if we had never worked together? I wouldn’t have had to say such brutal things. Gradually, my mind broke down worse than his.
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When he shouted, “You have no idea how much I’m suffering!”—I cut my wrist in front of him. I wanted him to see what I felt.
“Emotional pain is invisible, right? But you can see the blood flowing now, can’t you? I’m hurting this much too.”
He snapped out of it. “Stop. Don’t ever do that again.”
I no longer knew whether my being beside him was a source of strength or a burden.
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“Let’s die together. Then you’ll be free from this awful treatment, and we can be together in heaven.”
I meant it. Rather than watch him fall apart, I wanted to hold on to the good memories and die alongside him.
He said: “If you die, you’ll go to heaven. But I’m going to hell. We won’t meet there.”
I had been his accomplice. I felt sure I was headed for hell too.
“Even the virtuous attain birth in the Pure Land—how much more so the wicked… We’re both sinners. So we’ll both go to heaven.”
When I said that, he murmured, “I can go to heaven too?” and began reading Shinran’s Tannishō in his hospital room.
Ours was not a beautiful story of fighting cancer. We fought. We screamed at each other. We sobbed. I even suggested we die together. Our relationship shattered, and he told me it was over.
I heard his goodbye carrying two feelings at once: I am free and I still love you.
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He is still alive. But he is no longer a CEO. His once muscular body has withered. He published a massive book—almost like a last will—writing that he wanted to leave something for the next generation.
He was also someone who loved my writing. “Your essays are fascinating because you can’t tell where they’re going until the very last line!” The writing he loved is what I live by now.
I thought it was a masterpiece. Chemotherapy gave him the time to write it. It also gave me the time to hold that book against my chest, shake my head—no, no, no—and cry, preparing to say goodbye.
But I will keep asking.
Did chemotherapy make you happy?