Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. We
Speaker 1: decided not to tell the kids. Marla knew that once
Speaker 1: our three daughters understood that their mother had been given
Speaker 1: one thousand days to live, they'd start counting. They would
Speaker 1: not be able to enjoy school friends, their teams for
Speaker 1: birthday parties. They'd be watching too closely. How she looked, moved,
Speaker 1: acted eight or didn't. Marla wanted her daughters to stay children, unburdened,
Speaker 1: confident that tomorrow would look like yesterday. We threw everything
Speaker 1: at her, disease lectures, research, involvement in cancer organizations, yoga, meditation,
Speaker 1: teas and soups. She even went to a storefront hewer
Speaker 1: who lit incense, read her palm, and led her in prayer.
Speaker 1: He declared her a badass because of her restorative powers.
Speaker 1: It was a nickname that I promoted with all of
Speaker 1: her doctors and nurses because it was not only hopeful
Speaker 1: but true. She didn't just buy time, She cheated it,
Speaker 1: squeezed months and years out of it. Marla was a
Speaker 1: statistical freak, innaboration, an outlier. One thousand days landed firmly
Speaker 1: in our rear view mirror. That's John Melman. John is
Speaker 1: a New York City based real estate executive. And this
Speaker 1: is a story of a devoted husband and wife making
Speaker 1: a painful choice to keep a shared secret from their children,
Speaker 1: a complex and challenging decision made in the name of love.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. We grew up
Speaker 1: in washing d c. And this is now nineteen and
Speaker 1: I have a recollection of My father was a rabbi,
Speaker 1: and he was a somewhat of an avant garde rabbi
Speaker 1: at that juncture in that uh he only wanted to
Speaker 1: be a rabbi in metropolitan areas, not in a suburb,
Speaker 1: so really inner city. And so the first synagogue that
Speaker 1: he was at actually was at a church that shared
Speaker 1: Friday night and Saturday with the synagogue. And they took
Speaker 1: the cross out of the room, and they brought the carson,
Speaker 1: and they brought the arcs in and back and forth,
Speaker 1: unusual for those days, very unusual. So there were many
Speaker 1: politicians and others in the Jewish community that migrated to
Speaker 1: the synagogue, and before you knew it, he had five families.
Speaker 1: But even though John's father's congregation was growing in leaps
Speaker 1: and bounds, there weren't schools nearby that were academically strong enough,
Speaker 1: so John commuted each to a Jewish day school in
Speaker 1: Silver Spring, Maryland. This meant he didn't have a real
Speaker 1: childhood in the neighborhood because there weren't really any other kids.
Speaker 1: So John grows up a rabbi's kid with his own
Speaker 1: set of parameters and expectations. The community keeps an eye
Speaker 1: on the rabbis kids. There are proper ways to behave
Speaker 1: an image to uphold, and then in John's dad's big
Speaker 1: opportunity comes. He's the last candidate of over fifty rabbis
Speaker 1: to be interviewed at the largest synagogue in Boston. He
Speaker 1: got the job. He got the job, and what was
Speaker 1: interesting there was that my mother grew up in Brooklyne, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: so it was really a coming home party because the synagogue,
Speaker 1: al though is in Boston proper, it was a seven
Speaker 1: or eight minute walk to our home in Brooklyne. So
Speaker 1: I ended up going to the same high school that
Speaker 1: my mother did, and my grandparents lived about two miles
Speaker 1: away where the house that she grew up in was
Speaker 1: there that feeling too of the rabbis family needs to
Speaker 1: comport themselves in a certain by that time, Yes, And
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, we were the folks in
Speaker 1: that community had a higher standard than a small little
Speaker 1: synagogue in washing d C. So we've had the higher expectations.
Speaker 1: We went on every Friday night, I went on every Saturday.
Speaker 1: This seems important, maybe even integral to John's story and
Speaker 1: what comes later. His being a rabbi's son, a family
Speaker 1: held to a certain standard displayed on view for the
Speaker 1: whole community to see that. And also John grew up
Speaker 1: knowing that his father, the rabbi, was a keeper of confidences,
Speaker 1: of secrets. It was his pastoral duty keeping secrets. Taking
Speaker 1: on another person's burden also meant preserving integrity. So John
Speaker 1: goes off to college. He wants to get as far
Speaker 1: away from home as he possibly can, and his father
Speaker 1: tells him he can't cross the Mason Dixon line or
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, so he winds up at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: He meets his future wife, Marla, when he's a senior
Speaker 1: and she's a junior. There with a group of mutual
Speaker 1: friends who were all playing a game of intramural co
Speaker 1: ed football. For the first couple of games, um, I
Speaker 1: just kind of bost her around, like you need to
Speaker 1: do this, you need to cover there, you need to
Speaker 1: do this, and every really didn't have relationship with her.
Speaker 1: And then we went out as a group to a
Speaker 1: a bar pizza place after one of the games and
Speaker 1: I got to know her and she was actually dating
Speaker 1: or seeing one of the other guys on the team,
Speaker 1: and his name was Evan, and um I called up
Speaker 1: Evan because we were pretty friendly, and I said, Evan,
Speaker 1: I think I connected with Marla. I understand you may
Speaker 1: be seeing her or I'm not sure you're dating her
Speaker 1: or whatever it's going on, but do you mind if
Speaker 1: I asked her on a date? He said, sure, we're
Speaker 1: just friends. It's no big deal, no problem. I have
Speaker 1: no problem. Appreciate you asking and have fun. I think
Speaker 1: that was a Tuesday, I was, I think November four.
Speaker 1: The Thursday, November six, I called her and then I said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing tomorrow night? We went on on
Speaker 1: a date and that was thirty one years together. After
Speaker 1: that date, I just knew that there was something about
Speaker 1: Marla that I wasn't letting go of John graduates then
Speaker 1: finds a job very quickly in the real estate business
Speaker 1: in Chicago. He and Marla commute back and forth, and
Speaker 1: after she graduates, she joins him in Chicago, where she
Speaker 1: begins working as a graphic designer. They get two apartments
Speaker 1: because their parents don't approve of a twenty one and
Speaker 1: twenty two year old moving in together, and they keep
Speaker 1: up that charade for a year and a half. Then
Speaker 1: John decides to go to business school. He's ambitious and
Speaker 1: needs another degree, and the two of them head down
Speaker 1: to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but not before Marla's dad
Speaker 1: corners John and asks the fatherly question, what are your intentions?
Speaker 1: John's intentions, it seems from the moment he first meets Marla,
Speaker 1: or to spend his life with her. They get engaged
Speaker 1: on Marla's birthday, so we got married. We went to
Speaker 1: a honeymoon, and I started work two weeks later because
Speaker 1: I had no money, and she found a job pretty
Speaker 1: quickly as well in the traffic design business. She was
Speaker 1: pretty talented, and we started our lives. I was a
Speaker 1: lowly associate at Bankers Trust in the real estate investment
Speaker 1: banking group, calling on clients and doing pitch books and
Speaker 1: raising money, and that's what we did. We stayed in
Speaker 1: New York for about six years, and then we moved
Speaker 1: out to the suburbs in the right one our second
Speaker 1: just before a second was going to be born. So
Speaker 1: your firstborn was born in the city. They were all
Speaker 1: born in the city. Were all born in the city. Yes,
Speaker 1: three daughters, three daughters. So we moved to Scarsdale, which
Speaker 1: is a bedroom community, which is about a thirty five
Speaker 1: minute train ride from midtown. You're now a father of three,
Speaker 1: and is Marla still working at this point. No, Marls
Speaker 1: stopped working shortly after Sarah was born. So what were
Speaker 1: those early years like of this young family living in
Speaker 1: Scarsdale and you commuting into the city. Once you you
Speaker 1: know you're you're in the nursery school or preschool, with
Speaker 1: the synagogue or with the elementary school. Then you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have like these these automatic play
Speaker 1: groups and friend groups and adult groups. I may not
Speaker 1: have been the best father early on because I was
Speaker 1: working really hard. We're going to take a short break.
Speaker 1: I was working really hard, and I was never around.
Speaker 1: I was on the road three or four days a week.
Speaker 1: I was worked very very late, often on weekends and
Speaker 1: going back on the city on weekends. Or I worked
Speaker 1: in an office and in my house. But I was
Speaker 1: quite dedicated to my career at that juncture, and there
Speaker 1: were high expectations on that. I worked exceedingly hard for
Speaker 1: my clients. So John and Marla live a traditional, lovely
Speaker 1: family life in suburban Westchester. He's ambitious, competitive in his work.
Speaker 1: He loves the deal, the game. They have a vibrant
Speaker 1: social world filled with other families and John's clients. The
Speaker 1: girls are little. He's a devoted dad, though he also
Speaker 1: describes himself as distracted, not quite as present as he
Speaker 1: wishes he had been. Now that he reviews history, his
Speaker 1: phone is never far away. Still, he's always at their
Speaker 1: daughter's recitals and sporting events. He and Marla are in
Speaker 1: the thick of abundant, busy, burgeoning lives. There are a
Speaker 1: couple who would seem blessed, golden, like nothing dark or
Speaker 1: terrible could ever touch them. We had enormous fun hiking
Speaker 1: and bike riding and a skiing and all sorts of
Speaker 1: family excursions that included some form of outdoor experience. And
Speaker 1: having three daughters, they just saw this woman that could
Speaker 1: do anything. I was a pretty good athlete, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't anywhere close. So was this big joke that how
Speaker 1: good she was, and you know, versus me. So the
Speaker 1: girls gravitated to her and her athleticism and her her creativity.
Speaker 1: And she was this designer and she could cook, and
Speaker 1: she could she could art some crafts, and she put
Speaker 1: herself together with these incredible outfits. So she had this
Speaker 1: incredible design, athletic and persona that was. She had this
Speaker 1: stunning quality to her. Marla is diligent, very diligent about
Speaker 1: her health. She takes care of herself, sees her doctors,
Speaker 1: makes sure she stays on top of annual testing. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, she went for her regular test.
Speaker 1: I think it was on a Thursday. She went to
Speaker 1: test and she usually heard by the end of the
Speaker 1: day what the results were. And I was traveling and
Speaker 1: I came home on that Friday afternoon and she said
Speaker 1: to me, I'm not sure what's going on here. Doesn't
Speaker 1: do something doesn't feel right, something doesn't feel right. This
Speaker 1: is taken too long. And she had a premonition and
Speaker 1: that at four thirty or five o'clock the night before that.
Speaker 1: This was an hour or two before we had to
Speaker 1: go to this first initiation for bought Mitzvah's from my
Speaker 1: oldest and we found out that, you know, there was
Speaker 1: something we weren't really sure, but it was something, and
Speaker 1: that they thought it was the early stage of breast cancer.
Speaker 1: And this was in March thirty one to two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine that we got that in Zinger, and that
Speaker 1: really rocked us. We weren't really sure where it came
Speaker 1: from and who got how how it existed, and so
Speaker 1: forth and so on, and before you know that, we
Speaker 1: spent the next few weeks interviewing doctors, surgeons, all sorts
Speaker 1: of experts in the city. We were pretty well connected
Speaker 1: and we were able to find the right people pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: and and we started finding out that the type of
Speaker 1: cancer that she had was more severe from Ussell than
Speaker 1: most others. Even though it was early stage. We knew
Speaker 1: that it was something that we needed to contend with, that,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to keep our eye on this one.
Speaker 1: And then we found out after some further blood tests,
Speaker 1: that there is a cancer and linkage or a determinant
Speaker 1: potential determinant of breast cancer in women from the Jewish
Speaker 1: faith that do have a link to a mutation called
Speaker 1: the b r C a mutation, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that when Marrol took the blood test, she had it.
Speaker 1: If we had known this maybe five or seven years previous,
Speaker 1: we probably may have had kids sooner, and we would
Speaker 1: have been more proactive than reactive to certain things that
Speaker 1: you can do under precautionary circumstances. You would have probably
Speaker 1: have done a bilader on vasectomy before you were thirty
Speaker 1: or thirty five, and that ZIP code, and you probably
Speaker 1: would have had your ovaries taken out by your time
Speaker 1: you were forty. She was forty one. So this was
Speaker 1: all happening, and so the all this news was coming
Speaker 1: at us pretty rapidly, and we decided to do all
Speaker 1: that at once, and because we wanted to be extra
Speaker 1: certain at that time that we we're hopeful of zapping
Speaker 1: the cancer. She decided to do eight rounds of chemo
Speaker 1: right after that, so she did a bilateral mess actomy,
Speaker 1: she had an ovaries remove, she did eight rounds of chemo.
Speaker 1: We had a six month period where she was really
Speaker 1: you know, taking it in it, in it, in it,
Speaker 1: And during that period of time, your daughters were eight
Speaker 1: and eleven, and they were aware that she had been
Speaker 1: diagnosed with breast cancer at that time, and they knew
Speaker 1: that they knew that she was gonna lose her hair,
Speaker 1: they knew that she was going to be going through
Speaker 1: what I just described. But Marla took a very different
Speaker 1: approach to that. It's more mind over body and refused
Speaker 1: to change her lifestyle for this diagnosis. And despite the
Speaker 1: fact that she couldn't run for a few weeks because
Speaker 1: of what was going on with some of the surgeries,
Speaker 1: she was walking tremendously, and then even during chemo she
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to run, she ran four or five six
Speaker 1: days a week between during these periods times at very
Speaker 1: long distances, and this was her way of telling cancer
Speaker 1: that so fast. So this showed the kids most importantly
Speaker 1: that she wasn't going to succumb to any of the
Speaker 1: rumors or expectations of what toxicities would do. So everybody
Speaker 1: was telling her or you're gonna be really, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be drowsy, you're gonna be nauseous, You're not gonna have
Speaker 1: any energy. She was up at six six every morning running,
Speaker 1: just refused, refused to listen to any of these whispers
Speaker 1: and just her body told her you can do this,
Speaker 1: you can do this, And a couple of times she
Speaker 1: rested and she didn't feel it. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: she was defying anything that was told to her or
Speaker 1: risks that were told her. So the kids saw her
Speaker 1: living normally. She was involved in the school, she was
Speaker 1: wearing a wig, a wig came off, she had short hair,
Speaker 1: it grew back. The kids didn't care. So would you
Speaker 1: say at that time for your kids, this was like
Speaker 1: a speed bump, but not speed bump right. In fact,
Speaker 1: the entire time it was a speed bump because she
Speaker 1: never let it control her lifestyle. We went on trips,
Speaker 1: we were active in the community, We were socially active,
Speaker 1: we were physically active. They didn't know that, but I'm
Speaker 1: just saying this. Our lifestyle did not change, and they
Speaker 1: didn't see any difference to a normal family that may
Speaker 1: not have been dealing with a cancer situation. Did the community,
Speaker 1: you know, your community, the school community, the temple community.
Speaker 1: Did they know that? The first time we told everybody,
Speaker 1: and Marlo didn't like that. It's plenty, too many Lasagnas
Speaker 1: and too many castle roles, and too many people coming
Speaker 1: to the house and wondering and wanting and gossiping, and
Speaker 1: they were all scared for themselves, so they wanted to
Speaker 1: know what it was like. And she didn't like being
Speaker 1: the center of attention. She didn't like the pity. She
Speaker 1: didn't like any of that aspect of it. So fast forwarding,
Speaker 1: when it came back a couple of years later, she
Speaker 1: refused it to anybody except for blood, except for the children. So,
Speaker 1: just in terms of clarity, her cancer after the chemo,
Speaker 1: after the surgeries, went into remission. Yes, and the hope was,
Speaker 1: we're done with this a chapter, nothing more. We're finished.
Speaker 1: We're finished. And for that next year and a half
Speaker 1: you would never have known. She felt good about her body.
Speaker 1: She liked the newly improved. That was important to her
Speaker 1: in terms of her body. She wanted to feel good
Speaker 1: about it, and she felt that she licked it. And
Speaker 1: she was very involved. And at this time now we're
Speaker 1: involved in a big side of our community with the
Speaker 1: bar and bought Mitzvah's and so that was big part
Speaker 1: of Scarsdale, and and and the kids there was relatively
Speaker 1: i would say, of the community is Jewish. And our
Speaker 1: kids were now going through it every other year. So
Speaker 1: we had many, many of those, So that part of
Speaker 1: and Marla loved to dance and she loved to celebrate
Speaker 1: other people and herself. That was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: So she found, i would say, an ability to celebrate
Speaker 1: more after she had this, you know, first scare, you
Speaker 1: would never seen. Oh my god, she's incredible. I've never
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it, because she just blocked
Speaker 1: it away and and put her elbow into it and
Speaker 1: just threw it off. And the doctors were amazed. And
Speaker 1: every three and six months she got Queen Bill of Health.
Speaker 1: We're all always was touching herself, always feeling, always feeling,
Speaker 1: and she was always doing her own little probing in
Speaker 1: areas and her lymph nodes and her ears and her
Speaker 1: cheeks and her anywhere. But this area here and her
Speaker 1: this the clavital area she was always focused on, always
Speaker 1: focused on. And she felt a little p. And this
Speaker 1: is a couple of years after the first diagnosis, almost
Speaker 1: to the day. We always we didn't like March. We
Speaker 1: didn't like March. March. March was bad for us. So
Speaker 1: she found a little p the size of a p
Speaker 1: on her clavical We went back to slown cattering. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. The doctor said, you've got menesthetic breast cancer
Speaker 1: is back. He said, how can the p She's doing great,
Speaker 1: she feels great, he said to me, if it's not
Speaker 1: Hodgkins lymphoma kissed the floor that we're on. The chemo
Speaker 1: didn't work, he said, because it didn't get everything, so
Speaker 1: sometimes it leaks upwards into this area. So this is
Speaker 1: a normal type of breast cancer cell that was not sapped.
Speaker 1: Marla's doctor knew even before the pathology was done. He
Speaker 1: was an expert. He had seen this many times before.
Speaker 1: Of course, the pathology confirmed his worst fears. Conventional chemotherapy
Speaker 1: had done what it could and ultimately had failed. Now
Speaker 1: it was time for specialized clinical trials. The best of
Speaker 1: these for Marla was being conducted at Dana Farber in Boston.
Speaker 1: Their daughters at this point are now almost fourteen, almost twelve,
Speaker 1: and just ten. Marla and John make a decision not
Speaker 1: to tell them that their mother's cancer has returned. We
Speaker 1: were told a thousand days early on. They were not
Speaker 1: happy giving me that number. I pressed, because no doctor
Speaker 1: wants to be on the spit churning around with a date,
Speaker 1: A date certain His line was, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: round a thousand days, but go live your life as
Speaker 1: well as you can. Marla did not want to tell anybody.
Speaker 1: And then we got on to this process and she
Speaker 1: felt good, and the trial was working and working and working,
Speaker 1: and all her accounts and all her numbers were below
Speaker 1: before where she was previously. So she said, I feel good.
Speaker 1: I'm just now running up here to do my scans
Speaker 1: and so forth, and coming up here. Maybe I said
Speaker 1: of three or four times a month, it was two
Speaker 1: times a month. Once in a while, it was one
Speaker 1: time a month. But she wasn't blinking. She wasn't changing
Speaker 1: her lifestyle, and she was still playing tennis, and she
Speaker 1: was still running, and she was still running under the
Speaker 1: kids all over to their sports and all their activities,
Speaker 1: and she was still hosting birthday parties and whatever the case.
Speaker 1: So she's like, okay, this is just the way my
Speaker 1: chronic disease is going to enveloped my life. So the
Speaker 1: longer that she went, the longer she felt like, I
Speaker 1: don't have to tell anybody because I feel fine. I
Speaker 1: have two questions. One is I mean, I think I
Speaker 1: really understand this um and I think I in many
Speaker 1: ways would feel the same way. But the feeling of
Speaker 1: I don't want people to know, I don't want people
Speaker 1: to talk, I don't want the casseroles. Was that do
Speaker 1: you think was it? Is that pride or is that privacy?
Speaker 1: I think it was important that she did not want
Speaker 1: her kids lives tickled or affected or or bothered or
Speaker 1: any type of noise associated with her to link and
Speaker 1: make them worry or wonder. It was very simple. I
Speaker 1: want my kids to live a normalized lifestyle as if
Speaker 1: I was healthy, and I'm going to preserve that for
Speaker 1: whatever I can. And she did that for nine years,
Speaker 1: nine years, many more than a thousand days. So that
Speaker 1: leads me to my second question, which is the parents
Speaker 1: that were still living new or maybe siblings knew, but
Speaker 1: most people in your life had no idea that this
Speaker 1: was going on. Was what was that like for you?
Speaker 1: Was that isolating for you at all? Or did you
Speaker 1: just I'm I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing everybody's delts hands
Speaker 1: in life. We gotta crab sandwich and we had to
Speaker 1: deal with it. We're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We gotta crab sandwich and we had to deal with it.
Speaker 1: We never looked back and what was me? Why us?
Speaker 1: We never said that to each other. We never wondered, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I wish it had it just we just
Speaker 1: accepted it. But we tried to accept it in a
Speaker 1: manner that we fought it as fiercely as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: We used every access point that we possibly could, from
Speaker 1: a relationship standpoint, from an involvement standpoint, from traveling around
Speaker 1: two different hospitals to meet different doctors, to learn and
Speaker 1: to educate ourselves. So um, but there was nothing we
Speaker 1: can do. This is not hey, I broke my leg
Speaker 1: and it's gonna mend. We thought the first time that
Speaker 1: we'd get it. We knew this. Statistics were against us.
Speaker 1: Um and then even the second time, she out performed
Speaker 1: and pushed the boundaries, you know, three and a half
Speaker 1: times more than somebody else should have, and enabled our
Speaker 1: kids two go through their puberty, their adolescent teenage years,
Speaker 1: their high school years, you know, tough times for girls,
Speaker 1: not easy time for any girl. Saw them get into
Speaker 1: their colleges of their dreams. They all were academically very
Speaker 1: strong students. They were also incredible athletes, and they all
Speaker 1: played at a Division one level, which for Scarsdale Jewish
Speaker 1: girls was rare, so they were able to stay on
Speaker 1: track at a very very high level. That is probably
Speaker 1: only because of Marla that I saw this fierceness in
Speaker 1: her to fight the early days and the way that
Speaker 1: she lived her life knowing that she always had potentially
Speaker 1: had this cancer that was lingering. So it worked for us,
Speaker 1: It's not for everybody. It was uneasy fibbing. Could you
Speaker 1: describe that a little bit? For instance, we'd go on
Speaker 1: a vacation, but marl we always had to schedule our
Speaker 1: vacations on scans or treatments, and they were all being
Speaker 1: done in Boston. So we would leave from New York
Speaker 1: the day after she had her scan in Boston. She
Speaker 1: literally run back and then get on a plane. We
Speaker 1: go away. But then we go back and we come
Speaker 1: back to New York and Marlo go back to Boston.
Speaker 1: Why is mommy going back to Boston? Oh, she asked
Speaker 1: to you know, she's part of this trial. Yes, she
Speaker 1: was true, she was part of a trial. The piece
Speaker 1: of the truth, the piece of the truth. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like it wasn't as though this trial is keeping her alive. Kids.
Speaker 1: We never said that, And that was the truth. We
Speaker 1: called it the loving choice, to provide them enough information
Speaker 1: that they knew what was going on, but not every detail.
Speaker 1: So Marla really was fine, totally fine for years. She's
Speaker 1: fine years in which she requires a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: medical attention. Sometimes she wears a wig, but otherwise you
Speaker 1: really wouldn't suspect that she's dealing with a terminal illness.
Speaker 1: No one knows. But then, with her girls now all
Speaker 1: highly competent young adults, Marla starts running out of options.
Speaker 1: She's turned through every possible clinical trial and conventional medicine.
Speaker 1: She begins to develop tumors around her clavical again, and
Speaker 1: these are pinching her vocal cords. She has radiation and
Speaker 1: a port is put in. This, of course, becomes harder
Speaker 1: and harder to keep hidden. She has to change the
Speaker 1: way she dresses. No more summary outfits, nothing low cut
Speaker 1: or sleeveless. She wears scarves around her neck. I just thought,
Speaker 1: because she had this ability to regenerate, even when the
Speaker 1: trial that they didn't think of trial was gonna work,
Speaker 1: it would work for six or nine months, and which
Speaker 1: was unheard of. Most trials really work eight or sixteen weeks.
Speaker 1: I just figured we'd get through this holiday season. We
Speaker 1: have two graduations this year, one of which we had already.
Speaker 1: We have one in a month. I just figured she
Speaker 1: would plow through this and make it because the red
Speaker 1: letter days for her were so important to her. She
Speaker 1: lived for those, She lived for those days. I just
Speaker 1: figured she'd do it. But Marla in September and October
Speaker 1: could see that we were headed down a trickier place,
Speaker 1: and she decided, I'm done keeping this secret. I can't
Speaker 1: do it anymore. The guilt was was writing, and she
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what the timeline was. When you say guilt,
Speaker 1: was it because at that point she was facing her
Speaker 1: own mortality. Facing her mortality, she didn't want to walk
Speaker 1: around the house covering the port or the fact that
Speaker 1: she had different red spots because of the radiation. She
Speaker 1: just didn't want to hide anymore. She was certain she
Speaker 1: wanted to do in October, when the kids were home
Speaker 1: for the fall break and she felt then she felt better.
Speaker 1: She said, Okay, I'll just wait till Thanksgiving. Then she
Speaker 1: doesn't bad news in November that really there wasn't much
Speaker 1: left in terms of the even the conventional medicines, and
Speaker 1: there was one last Jefferd but the doctors were saying,
Speaker 1: you need to start to get ready here. But I
Speaker 1: just figured she would do it for another six or
Speaker 1: eight months and to be a crappy summer of nineteen.
Speaker 1: I thought the summer nineteen would be really grappy. They're older,
Speaker 1: two daughters are away in college, and the youngest is
Speaker 1: a high school senior, and John and Marla set them
Speaker 1: down over Thanksgiving to break some of the news to them,
Speaker 1: not all of the news. So we told the kids
Speaker 1: and Thanksgiving that we were concerned, not worried, but we
Speaker 1: were concerned that mom had taken a turn and some
Speaker 1: things had occurred that we did not expect, and that
Speaker 1: we were working through them, but that we were basically
Speaker 1: flashing a yellow light not to worry, and we had
Speaker 1: a script that we had come in our mind, and
Speaker 1: it went really well. And then Marla pushed the envelope
Speaker 1: a little bit in the conversation, and we had the
Speaker 1: girls in a pretty good place, because I don't think
Speaker 1: that they were totally surprised by all of this, that
Speaker 1: there was something going on, because the little one was
Speaker 1: at home and I'm sure she was telling the sisters that,
Speaker 1: you know, my mom has been running around a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And she said in this conversation, and we
Speaker 1: had talked about this line, which was, you know, there's
Speaker 1: the likelihood that I'm gonna make it to a d
Speaker 1: is very low, and then she said head and I
Speaker 1: was shocked by and I did a turn with my
Speaker 1: neck on't forget, she said, and it's unlikely that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make it to sixty. And that's when we had
Speaker 1: a little bit of bed limb in the house. The
Speaker 1: girls were not expecting that, and that sort of changed
Speaker 1: the vibe and the rhythm to the conversation. But she
Speaker 1: had had enough of the gamesmanship that she had and
Speaker 1: the brinksmanship that she had. John how old was Marla,
Speaker 1: So she January she would have been fifty two. And
Speaker 1: then just a couple of weeks later, Marla takes a turn.
Speaker 1: She's feeling extremely parched, an unusual symptom, and asks John
Speaker 1: to take her to the hospital so she can get
Speaker 1: ivy fluids. It's there at the hospital that it's discovered
Speaker 1: Marla is hours away from septic shock. There was a
Speaker 1: hole in her stomach that a tumor had perforated. And
Speaker 1: then two weeks later, this, we had a hard right turn,
Speaker 1: and the girls knew that it was a hard right turn.
Speaker 1: And I will say that during those times in the hospital,
Speaker 1: which were incredible to see her mind work, they were
Speaker 1: incredibly thankful that Marrow it shows the way to play
Speaker 1: this out and to wait it out and not linking
Speaker 1: and not telling them. That was comforting to Marlow that
Speaker 1: her decision, which was in their best interests, which she
Speaker 1: always wondered about, was the right one. And in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of Marla's death, has that feeling continued. I think so.
Speaker 1: I think so. We know we're dealing with different levels
Speaker 1: of grief in terms of denial and anger and super sadness.
Speaker 1: I call it. Different kids have different moods. I wish
Speaker 1: I could get everybody on the same page to have
Speaker 1: a bad day the same day, but that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: to me. Especially Nevertheless, there are some friends that we're
Speaker 1: in a different predicament of theirs that knew about their
Speaker 1: parents illness and they were miserable knowing about it, worrying
Speaker 1: about it. What happened to the doctor's appointment? What did
Speaker 1: the doctors say, what what did the tests say? What
Speaker 1: does this mean? How can can we are, we are
Speaker 1: we going to be normal? We're not. And that had
Speaker 1: an effect on everybody, on these children, and that they
Speaker 1: told the kids how lucky they were for not knowing.
Speaker 1: And I think that that resonated with the girls, and
Speaker 1: I think that that comforted them that in retrospect they
Speaker 1: probably saw signs that they were they could have been
Speaker 1: more picked up on. And they were snoopy too, And
Speaker 1: I'm sure they looked at emails and texts and so
Speaker 1: forth and so on, but they we never really talked
Speaker 1: about it until Thanksgiving. Now it's December. There's no question
Speaker 1: now as to what's happening to Marla. She's dying and
Speaker 1: everyone knows it. The time for secrecy and all the
Speaker 1: protections it offers has passed. Marla has been dealt. How
Speaker 1: did John put it earlier, A crap sandwich. But within
Speaker 1: that crap sandwich is incredible intentionality. She's going to mother
Speaker 1: her girls her way, right up until the very end.
Speaker 1: She told me to get the kids and bring him in,
Speaker 1: and she needed to tell them a few things each
Speaker 1: what I called her the hopes and dreams, as in
Speaker 1: her hopes and dreams for them and dreams for them,
Speaker 1: and so the three kids were in there, and we
Speaker 1: each have a parent that's alive, so they were there,
Speaker 1: and one of Marlo's brothers were there, and we had
Speaker 1: a family friend who was our housekeeper who was also
Speaker 1: a caregiver to Marlow as well, and so she was there.
Speaker 1: So we had this experience where we all finally got
Speaker 1: everybody to gather because we have tried level and people
Speaker 1: were in different places and so forth. So we got
Speaker 1: everybody together and Marrow had a script in her head,
Speaker 1: but she didn't tell me what she was going to say.
Speaker 1: I kind of knew what she was gonna say, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know exactly how elegant and eloquent and articulate
Speaker 1: she'd be. This is a person now, who is you know,
Speaker 1: seven seven days away from passing, six days away from passing,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know that it will be six days
Speaker 1: or sixteen days or one day. We propped her up
Speaker 1: on the bed and she closed her eyes and she
Speaker 1: just spoke as though she was reading a tele prompt her.
Speaker 1: It was just the most amazing thing that she would
Speaker 1: It was like as though she rehearsed it, and it's
Speaker 1: not like you and I are talking now and we're
Speaker 1: just doing it off the cuff. This was incredibly rehearsed
Speaker 1: and and laid out in a precise outline for every person.
Speaker 1: Six days later, Marl passed away on December. John estimates
Speaker 1: that between eight and fifty nine people attended her funeral.
Speaker 1: But on this day, with her family gathered around her,
Speaker 1: she shares her hopes and dreams for her daughters as
Speaker 1: if laying out a series of life plans. Her extraordinary
Speaker 1: parting gift. And then we had a popsical party, a
Speaker 1: popsical party, had a popsic party. Then we played this
Speaker 1: game Cars Wants Humanity and she was a judge, and
Speaker 1: we had lots of hooting and laughing, and she had
Speaker 1: this very tart sense of humor and she was, you know,
Speaker 1: she was in full force. Many thanks to John Melman
Speaker 1: for sharing his family's story with us. You can find
Speaker 1: his essay My wife was dying and we didn't tell
Speaker 1: our children on the Atlantic dot com. Families Secrets is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer,
Speaker 1: Lowell Brolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is
Speaker 1: the executive producer and a very special thanks to Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil for his soundscaping work on this episode. If you
Speaker 1: have a family secret you'd like to share, you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us at listener mail at Family
Speaker 1: Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets
Speaker 1: Pod and Twitter at FAMI Secrets Pod. For more about
Speaker 1: my book Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com. Yeah for
Speaker 1: more podcasts. For my heart radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.