Erica Finamore is an editor and writer from New York City. After 26 months of caregiving, she lost her husband to glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer, at age 30. She is a brain tumor research advocate and member of the Gray Nation Endurance Team through National Brain Tumor Society.

Erica Finamore

In the now famous commencement speech made by Steve Jobs back in 2005 he said “Almost everything— all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” I remember listening to that speech and printing the words and worshipping them. I wanted that kind of bravery, but I didn’t have it. I followed the motions; I cared a great deal what people thought of me (I still do) and I played everything safe. I planned and prepared and gunned it through every piece of my life with laser-like focus.

When I was 28, I had my dream job and dream husband and everything in my life had gone according to plan. I defined myself by how busy I was and how together I was and how hard I worked. I had every reason to pause and enjoy it all, but I didn’t, because I assumed those things would always be there—that they were earned and inevitable.

My husband, Jon, was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer and none of my obsessive planning, rule-following or caution made a difference. That rocked me to my core, it shattered my world and it made me better. I feel devastatingly unlucky to have lost him so soon, and so overwhelmingly lucky to be alive.

Once you see how quickly life can be taken away, all of the little things we don’t do and don’t try feel foolish. There’s pain in being embarrassed but there’s a much greater pain in regret. Watching Jon fight so hard to live and enjoy every minute of his life made me want to fight harder too- to live the bravest life possible in his honor.

We all have a certain amount of time on this earth— and whether you spend that time doing the things you're passionate about, taking a chance on people you think might make you happy or just dreaming about doing those things. It all ends at some point. I wish I could go back and tell myself to take more chances, but I can’t, so I’ll tell you now.

I’m not a big sharer, but I keep talking about Jon and my story here. I’m not someone who overly emotes but I can muster up the courage now to tell people how I feel. I try to remember, every day, that very few things are really worth fearing.

In 2020, every one of us has been tried, but as we head into this new year, it’s important to remember that there is an abundance of good waiting for us too— if we’re brave enough to make it happen.

Articles

Life is fleeting, and cancer survivors and caregivers understand that perhaps better than most. 

We Should All Be Fighting For Our Best Possible Lives

Most people in the cancer community know about 

 and his son Beau Biden. Beau was diagnosed with glioblastoma and lived over two years with the disease, working through most of it as the Attorney General of the state of Delaware. Regardless of your views on politics, there’s no doubting that having anyone in a high office with a very personal connection to cancer is helpful—both for awareness and advancement.

 at age 28, it was incredibly difficult to find other people near that age range to talk to about it. People didn’t want to alarm us, but they also didn’t want to give us hope when it wasn’t realistic. I wanted to get people’s real experiences and real stories, but what I kept getting were watered down experiences that remained mostly clinical rather than emotional. Glioblastoma also affects everyone so differently that I rarely relate with one person’s “journey” on a deeper level. The losses each person experiences are so different, and they come at such vastly different speeds.

In a time where I was looking for anyone with any kind of experience, I found “

Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

,” Joe Biden’s book about his son’s illness, his decision not to run for President in 2016, and his time as Vice-president. I read it because a variety of people told me not to; that it would hit too close to home. I knew from that endorsement that it was exactly what I needed to read right then. Jon Marc was only four months into his diagnosis, and I knew parts of it would be hard to read because Beau inevitably didn’t survive this, but I’m a planner and I just wanted to see if I could get any idea of what I was in for.

I learned a lot about Beau’s particular tumor and his experience. Like Jon Marc, Beau had aphasia or “tip of the tongue” syndrome. You know what word you’re looking for, but you can’t get it out and it’s frustrating when this happens to people just occasionally, but when it’s all the time it’s a social nightmare. Beau also found himself going through options A, B, C and D in his treatment, and at the time, Jon and I had had a rough few month of letdowns and changes of treatment plans. There’s something about knowing that someone else out there who was also smart and driven and actually, from Wilmington, DE, that had gone through what we were going through.

There are a few quotes from the book that I highlighted at the time, and as I read them now, they strike me just as powerfully, albeit differently, but this one in particular seems to click more now than ever.

“When one of your loved ones goes out of your life, you think what he might have done with a few more years, and you wonder what you are going to do with the rest of yours. Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself part of it, trying to accomplish something—something he did not have time enough to do. And perhaps that is the reason for it all,” from Joe Sr., President-Elect Biden’s father.

When Jon passed this last April, I felt sad and cheated and angry, but then I also knew I had to channel that into gratitude somehow. Jon didn’t get more time, but I do—I live every day now knowing I have to make it count in some way. It’s a lot of pressure, but more often than not it pushes me to be a better version of myself.

It pushes me to act; to be kinder, to take joy in small things and to tell Jon’s story and work toward a cure for glioblastoma. Even in death, Jon drives me to be a better person—there’s something comforting about that.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to

President-elect has a well known personal relationship with cancer as his son Beau Biden was diagnosed with glioblastoma and passed from this disease. This high-profile journey and story had an impact on my own journey with cancer.

How Joe Biden’s Experience With Cancer Influenced My Journey

I was never a big date person until my husband got sick.

I don’t mean date as in dinner and a movie, I mean actual calendar dates. But when Jon got diagnosed with glioblastoma and I knew we were on borrowed time, every day seemed to matter more. We celebrated our six-month wedding anniversary because we weren’t sure we’d make it to our one-year anniversary. Then when we did make it a full year, Jon was in the ICU that day recovering from a trial surgery in which they injected a virus into his brain. Don’t get me wrong, we spent the evening in a pricey room overlooking the east river, but that room happened to be located at NYU’s Tisch Hospital.

That anniversary felt like a victory because we had fought so hard to get to that milestone, something most couples (myself included) take for granted. We even made it to our two year anniversary, and while Jon’s health was declining, he was well enough for us to take a drive to Philly and celebrate our anniversary in the place where we got married, eating dinner where we had our rehearsal dinner two years before. 

Again, that two-year anniversary felt incredibly meaningful because there had never been any indication, we’d be celebrating it together: His genetic markers were bad, his scans were bad, his tumor location was bad. Making it to that day was nothing short of a miracle for us, and to commemorate it, we had our amazing wedding photographer capture it, and I bought us both bracelets that say, “Love Never Fails,” in morse code beads. We buried Jon in his and I wear mine every day as a reminder. Jon’s health may have failed us but love never did.

Wednesday, October 21st will be my first wedding anniversary without my husband, and it’s a day I’ve been dreading. It would have only been our third anniversary and we both would have been 31—a young age and a tiny number—and yet it’ll never be ours.

I’ve thought a lot about what our anniversary would mean this year for me now that he’s gone, and while I do feel bad for myself (who else knows a 30-year-old widow?) I found myself reflecting on all of the incredible things we did in that short amount of time.

We learned so many life lessons, experienced new places and things and we got to share a meaningful and deep love. We shoved a lot of life into those 30 months of marriage, and I know we had something that some people don’t see even at 50 years— for that I’m grateful.

I remember every date now without wanting to really. The day he was diagnosed, the dates of our scans, good or bad, the anniversary of his death and the anniversaries of big moments in our lives. I know over time some of those will fade away, but October 21st will always be a big one.

While this date will always be a bittersweet memory for me, I hope it will serve as a positive reminder for our friends and family and people we don’t even know that even in the best health, days and dates are precious.

Forever isn’t a given for all of us—tell people how you feel about them now.

Take the trip and don’t hold out for the perfect time. Celebrate every victory and every good day, no matter how minute. Life’s two biggest gifts are love and time—if you’re lucky enough to get both, use them well.

After cancer took her husband away, one caregiver discusses the importance of celebrating the important dates and milestones. Even after they're gone. 

The Big Dates After Cancer Takes A Loved One Away

I had my life together, I mean really, impressively, together. I was 28, living in New York and working as a Features Editor for Food Network Magazine (my dream) and I had just recently gotten married to a doctor (my parent’s dream).

All jokes aside, that doctor was named Jon Marc, and he was my dream too — the answer to a lifetime spent wondering if soulmates really existed or if marriage was something I’d ever really want. At that time, Jon was a neurology resident at NYU Langone, one of the best neuro programs in the country. We were a modern-day power couple, and when people would say that I would laugh and be like “no way you’re crazy!” but they were right.

Also, we were very funny and kind of adorable (in my unbiased opinion). That life made sense — it was one I had built off hard work and some luck, but mostly hard work. Everything had fallen into place in a way that was so much better than I imagined. When Jon proposed at Central Park a couple of years earlier, my first reaction was to say, “I can’t believe my life gets to be this good.”

Then, one day in February 2018, after Jon complained about a series of headaches and some memory loss, we went to the emergency room to make sure it was just a flu. As a neurology resident, Jon knew that some of those things were symptomatic of brain tumors, but because that was a lot of what he saw all day, we both assumed he was just being overanxious.

That night at the ER, a surgical resident asked Jon if he wanted to look at his MRI scan, and in that instant, Jon saw his future shorten before his eyes. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a grade 4 brain tumor. It wasn’t just that he had a deadly brain tumor, but also that it was lodged deep in his left temporal lobe — hard to get to surgically and right where his speech and comprehension centers were located. He knew this because he had read hundreds of scans in his lifetime, always hoping he’d never be in the situation to read one like this of his own.

In four short months of marriage, I went from writing wedding thank you cards to filling out advanced directives. Before I ever had the time to get comfortable being called Jon’s wife, I was his caretaker and then his widow.

Everything about Jon made him a hero, but the way he chose to live his life when faced with a terminal diagnosis was nothing short of magic. He never felt sorry for himself and rarely felt angry. He spent every minute and ounce of energy enjoying the time he had and making sure the people in his life enjoyed their time with him too. For years, Jon fought like a true champion. His bosses and colleagues at NYU became his doctors and lifesavers.

He had a resection surgery, a shunt surgery and a clinical trial where a virus was injected into his brain cavity. He tried immunotherapy, chemotherapy, radiation and experimental medications. We had a string of a few good months here and there, but the tumor always learned and grew back. It was something we knew would likely happen but were hoping wouldn’t. As I told Jon in that first week, we’d just have to outrun it.

The longer he stayed alive, the more time it gave doctors to come up with better treatments and cures. We ran fast, but the cancer was faster. Jon was only expected to live somewhere between 10-15 months, but he lived for 26 — impressive and outstanding, just like every other aspect of his life. Jon was incredibly humble and would turn bright red if he read that sentence, but it would be a disservice to his memory not to tell you just how great he was.

On April 17, 2020, the world lost an incredibly driven and caring doctor, and I lost the kindest, funniest, and most loving person I’d ever known.

As a caregiver, you rarely have 10 seconds to think or reflect on anything, but with him gone now, I find myself looking back more than ever. There are so many things we did right, that I look forward to sharing with you all, and so many things I’ll probably always feel unsure of. In cancer, there are no “right” answers, but all of us, caregivers, fighters and survivors must move forward knowing we did what we could with the information we had at the time. I recognize that I’m still doing that now — living my life in a way that I hope Jon would be proud of.

Jon’s passion was helping others, so writing here I hope I can help others too, even if it’s just to feel less alone in a world where unexpected things happen. As Joan Didion said, “We imagine things that we wouldn’t be able to survive. We have no choice, so we do it.” So, let’s do it.

As a caregiver, you rarely have 10 seconds to think or reflect on anything, but with my husband gone now, I find myself looking back more than ever. There are so many things we did right, and so many things I’ll probably always feel unsure of.

Erica Finamore | Contributors

We Should All Be Fighting For Our Best Possible Lives

How Joe Biden’s Experience With Cancer Influenced My Journey

The Big Dates After Cancer Takes A Loved One Away

There are No ‘Right’ Answers When it Comes to Cancer

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