Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide. This is the first of four essays in which readers tell how they live with the bruising demands of today's workplaces.
"Congratulations, you're being promoted."
You'd think that a career-oriented, hard-working, Type-A, borderline workaholic like me would be thrilled to hear those words. After all, isn't that the goal? To work your way up the corporate ladder, take on more challenges and responsibilities, and – as many people my age would like to do – eventually take over the world?
I had worked my butt off the previous two years, after transferring within the same company to a much larger office. But I knew I'd have to differentiate myself if I was going to surpass dozens of other highly motivated individuals.
There was one very, very big problem, though: Just before I went to the meeting where I was told I was being promoted, my mother-in-law called me. My beautiful wife, Heather, who had been battling breast cancer for a year, was going to die in the next couple of weeks.
Heather had been in hospital for a month because of extreme pain from the multiple tumours invading her body. The disease had progressed to Stage 4 within two months of diagnosis. Now, after multiple chemotherapy treatments, radiation, surgery to remove a tumour weighing more than five pounds and some of the best oncologists throwing everything they could at the disease, we were being told there was nothing more they could do.
I received the call about two hours before my lunch with two partners from my firm. I sat alone in a boardroom, crying. This has to be a dream, I thought. I'm 31 years old and my wife's just about to turn 30. This isn't supposed to happen to people like us.
We were both career-oriented individuals who loved our jobs and the people we worked with. Two years earlier, we'd bought a house together. Both of us were focused on two things: each other and our careers. Now, this horrible disease was taking our carefully drawn-up plan, crumpling it up and throwing it in a giant shredder.
I could tell the two partners were expecting me to be a little more excited about the promotion. One of them , my coach, gave me a sideways glance as I stumbled through an awkward thanks. All the partners knew Heather was sick, but I didn't tell them the gut-wrenching news I'd just received. I was afraid I'd break down.
The thing is, Heather and I never in a million years expected it to reach this point. When she was diagnosed, we knew we had to fight this together and that she’d beat it. In hindsight, though, she never had a chance. While oncologists worked to diagnose what type of cancer she had, the tumour in her right breast started to grow rapidly. That five-pound tumour I mentioned earlier grew to that size in only two months. After the surgery, it was one bad-news appointment after another. Heather’s health deteriorated to the point where she needed a pain pump to feed her hydromorphone throughout the workday.
What may shock people is that during this entire year that she was sick, both of us continued to work, and we worked a lot.
I’m a manager at a large public accounting firm, so I continued working crazy hours in the busy season. During Heather’s stays in hospital, I’d spend some days in the room with her, working on my laptop and talking on the phone. I’d sneak away to quiet rooms to take conference calls. I kept attending conferences. I went to networking events. And Heather? She was working her laptop and phone as well, directing her subordinates, fielding questions from her bosses – and, until two weeks before her death, still reviewing the biweekly payroll.
Few people outside of immediate family, close friends and our bosses knew she was sick. Many people I contacted after she passed away were shocked. Heather had gone to great lengths to manage her appearance: wigs, breast prosthesis, trendy handbag to camouflage the all-important pain pump.
Now that she has passed, I find myself asking if all this work was even worth it. Sitting in our house alone, knowing she isn’t coming back, I wonder if I should have taken the partners up on their offer to take more time off. Should I have put my career on hold to care for her? Did I make a huge mistake by trying to balance her care and my career interests?
I’ve concluded that Heather wouldn’t have wanted me to take time off – mostly because she barely took time off herself while she was sick. We looked at cancer as just another speed bump in the road toward our goals. Focusing on our careers kept us distracted from her illness and gave us something to look forward to once she beat cancer. Unfortunately, that day never came.
I did accept the promotion and I got the pleasure of telling Heather about it before she passed. My employers were gracious enough to give me time off near the end. This allowed us to get married in the hospital, spend time with friends and family and for me to be by Heather’s side, holding her hand as she took her final breath.
This chapter in my life has ended way too early, but I will cherish it the rest of my life. It may feel like my world has ended, but past this horizon I have new and exciting chapters to write.
Paul Vetrone lives in Burlington, Ont.