My Valentine

I'm a few days late on this, but since we're still in the same week as Valentine's Day, I think it's still relevant. When I wrote about Quinn being my savior, my mom gave me a little bit of a rough time about it. She said, "I really think Chris is the one you should be thanking. He's your warrior." And here's the thing: she's right - Chris IS my rock. (Too corny to insert a geology joke here?) So how about I give them both credit? Because those two guys are my entire world.

If you've been married, you know that you never really know what you're getting into when you say "I do" to someone. I might be quoting from previews for next week's episode of The Bachelor when I say that marriage is the ultimate gamble.

What? It's an addictive show.

My wedding day was one of the happiest days of my life. See?

And you think you're making an informed decision, forging a bond with someone who makes your heart skip a beat. Someone who makes you feel safe and shares your dreams and makes you laugh. Someone who embraces your family and friends and you for all the imperfections and oddities and quirkiness, and opens up to let you see those same vulnerabilities in him.

But can you ever know how that person will react when you come home one afternoon with cancer?

So if marriage is a gamble, then I won that lottery. Because when I came home that day with my terrible news, and my knees threatened to crumble underneath me, Chris held me up and then shored me through the roughest two weeks of my life. Not to mention the last six months.

HOLY SHIT HOW HAVE WE BEEN DEALING WITH THIS FOR SIX MONTHS?!?

I guess I ought to thank him.

So thanks, babe. Thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder in the shower and for washing my "hair" when my T-Rex arms couldn't reach above my shoulders after surgery.

Thanks for being strong for me so that I could be strong for myself and for Bug, so that we could get through all of this.

Thanks for all you do to keep our household running (I swear, there will come a time when you're not constantly washing baby bottles).

Thanks for calming me down when I thought our cat had run away, only to discover him hiding in my closet 14 hours later, poor cat.

Thanks for being Bug's best friend (and mine) and for putting up with the emotional roller coaster ride cancer has led us on. We're so close to being done with this ordeal.

I couldn't have made it through any of this or gotten to this without you.

I promise to stop crying daily, one of these days, and to listen when you say that "cancer should be the one crying." And I think eventually I'll stop worrying about recurrence, that ugly word. How about I promise I'll love you for the rest of my very long life?

Because we beat this. We won this war. We have the battle scars to prove it. And I might be quoting yet again from The Bachelor when I say that if we made it through this, we can make it through anything.