Cheryl: Secrets
This is not the story of a client, but a personal friend. Cheryl was a gentle, soft-spoken nurse and the devoted mother of three boys. Their father left when the boys were young, later dying far away under the care of a second family.
Cheryl worked countless extra shifts to give the boys the life she hoped for them. She kept her complaints (and her joys) tucked inside her, living with quiet resolve, By the time I met Cheryl, the boys were grown and each finding their way in the world. Her middle son, Todd, stayed close by. When Cheryl was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer, Todd moved back home. His care was imperfect, but steadfast and constant. He loved her fiercely, as did all her sons.
During her illness, her greatest comfort came not from bucket list check-offs or grand gestures, but from the familiar, soft glow of the television. Watching reruns of soothing, classic shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Leave It to Beaver, and I Dream of Jeannie calmed her nervous system and occupied her days. Mother and son spent countless hours side by side bathed in the easy cadence of those voices from the past. Thinking of them sharing this simple, ordinary tenderness brings me joy to this day.
As her cancer progressed, Todd’s role became ever more intimate—first daily, then hourly—until he became her companion as her body slowly relinquished its hold on life. In May of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Cheryl was admitted to the hospital. She died there, with a fellow nurse by her side.
Months later, in a moment of lighthearted curiosity, Todd began tracing his his genealogy on Ancestry. What he learned shook the ground beneath him: the man he had always known as his father—the man who left, whose absence shaped his childhood—was not his biological father at all. His biological father was someone else entirely: a pharmaceutical salesman whose name he had never heard. This man was also deceased.
With his mother and both his fathers gone, Todd was left with no one to ask, no one to explain, and no one to forgive. The discovery settled over his like a quiet, dense fog. Why didn’t she tell me? Her silence became a shadow stretching back across time and dimming the light of those tender hours by the television.
For Todd, Cheryl’s secrecy felt like a fracture in her legacy, and a silence that lingered louder than words of truth might have.
Todd continues on his path of resolution and healing, learning to weave this new truth into the tapestry of his life. I wish him peace as he carries this truth forward.
For myself, I find comfort in offering forgiveness to Cheryl for the terrible burden she must have carried. I ask forgiveness, too, for my own lack of understanding, and I hold gratitude for the lesson her story offers: that silence and secrets carried to the grave can wound as deeply as the illness itself.
Still, even these wounds live alongside love. Todd’s care, Cheryl’s quiet endurance, and their shared hours in the glow of classic television remain. They are the soft threads left behind, the tools for Todd’s healing, and the evidence of love’s persistence. Cheryl’s story lingers in the spaces between words, reminding us that love and silence can entwine, leaving both shadow and radiance in their wake.
