Beyond the Veil
My husband and I climbed into the car on a gray-sky Friday morning, reflexively starting the engine and buckling our seat belts. He pushed the clutch to the floor putting us in reverse, even stretching his arm to my headrest while looking over his right shoulder before he froze, looking at me. I stared back dumbfounded, unable to answer the question I saw on his tear-stained face: where do you go after you find out you have cancer?
We drove blindly through the city, sharing pieces of the pathology report we managed to hear: Stage III, aggressive, metastatic. My prognosis was unclear, but the nurse’s piteous face and tone did not bode well for me. We found ourselves by the water’s edge. Gripping each other’s hands, we gazed at the horizon: the vanishing point our eyes perceive to be the end of the ocean, but what our minds know is actually a curve of the Earth.
When we felt strong enough to play pretend, we drove home to the kids. Much of that afternoon we took turns parenting while the other stole away to the porch to call a relative, to stare at the sky, to think, but never to cry; crying seemed inadequate. When the four of us were together, my husband took pictures, his phone glued to his hand permanently on camera-mode. Other than the sheer number of them, the shots he took of me that day look like the ones he took the week before: I am zipping my son’s jacket, tucking a stray hair behind my ear, reaching for my daughter’s offering of dead leaves. The pictures capture the moment, store away memories, but they don’t reveal the change in me: the veil that was removed from my eyes the moment I entered the world as a cancer patient. I stood in the driveway, a place I have been countless times before, but nothing looked the same.
The day before, my son’s too-tight zipper would have prompted me to grab my phone and shop for a bigger jacket; today it highlighted the adorable pudge of his toddler tummy, and I didn’t resist the urge to reduce him to a fit of giggles from a solid, ripping raspberry before he wiggled out of my grasp. Yesterday the dead leaves from my daughter’s mittened hands would have served as an irritating reminder of how I’ve put off raking the front lawn; today each brittle leaf was an offering of the unreserved love radiating from her heart that I cradled in my arms.
My cancer diagnosis lifted a veil from my eyes, and a brilliant Truth radiated flawlessly over everything.
The things I spent my life focusing on were relegated to the shadows; the once sharp edges of the notions of success, acceptance, and wealth obscured. They stayed on the other side of the veil, causing me to nearly float away as the weight of unimportant things vanished from my shoulders. In the world beyond the veil unconditional love reigns; it’s all I can see, feel, and do. Nothing I see or set my mind on is meaningless: even zippers and leaves overflow with love. My husband’s feverish clicking of the camera button that dismal afternoon stemmed from a primal need to capture this Truth; to definitively hold the answer to humanity’s most pressing question about the purpose of life and thrust it overhead for all the world to see.
But it eludes us – most of us. I am beyond the veil alone; I see what really matters standing bold against the muck of our everyday lives while everyone passes it by without a second glance. I long to shout, “Look! Don’t you see that family dinner you’re passing by on your way to that promotion? See over there? Your innate talent is doing back-flips trying to convince you to share it with the marginalized. Stop pending energy disliking your stubborn coworker, you’re neglecting your relationships with the people who love you. Loudest of all is joy, signalling to you to abandon social media and its false promises of self-worth. She wants you to join her in quietly helping others without a hashtag. You’re missing it. Open your eyes. Oh please, open your eyes!”
When I try to lift the veil for those around me; to show them the self-important things they are worrying about do not matter, I end up sounding cliché. To the impatient Suburu honking two seconds after the light turns green, I say, slow down and enjoy every moment. To the weary cashier who begrudgingly clocks into work: seize the day! To the stubborn co- worker’s third rude e-mail of the day: let go of the things you cannot control. I hear myself saying these platitudes – oh dear God I’m Positive Patty - and I’m not surprised no one listens. I remember when I lived on the other side of the veil, these sayings went in one ear, and my unrestrained eye roll made them slip right out the other. How can I expect anyone to see past the cacophony of arrogance and impatience to the good stuff: the stuff they will miss if it is gone - if they are gone?
It may be a futile effort to invite others here. Perhaps it’s impossible for someone to see what I see unless they flirt with death. Unlike imagining death, a brush with death can create emotions singular to the real event. This is what it takes to imagine the world without you, and you without the world in a palpable way. If the old me ever caught a glimmer of the world existing beyond the empty life I was living, I quickly diverted my attention. The pull of the inconsequential was always more appealing than confronting death. I kept the idea of death and my feelings towards it in the dusty corners of my mind, and I distracted myself with the shiny talismans of life: new shoes, 1,000 likes, brunch!
When the tumor showed up and the doctors labeled it metastatic, things changed. Death wrenched back the veil and stood inexplicably in front of me. Fearfully, I became acquainted, asking, is it my time? Is my diagnosis the declarative sentence you send to those you walk away with? Or is it a parenthesis sent to interrupt my status-quo?
The toxic medicine that made my hair and fingernails fall out, and the piercing radiation that scorched my skin chased Death away this time, but not without first lifting the veil, revealing the Truth. Am I fortunate to be one of the few to access the reality of death? I don’t know. The year of treatment that forced me to watch my children grow from the sidelines was not a small price to pay to see the beautiful world dancing behind our status quo; however, the view from here is breathtaking.
Like all things that become unfocused with the passage of time, the clarity of the Truth will fade if I am not vigilant. While it is crisp, I try to spread at least a glimmer of the beautiful Truth by loving strangers and enemies as much as I love my family and friends. I don’t claim to be doing it perfectly; in fact, considering the years of misdirection that cemented a self-centered way of thinking in my mind, it would be generous to say I was doing it decently. Even with imperfections, living a life that glorifies the Truth will keep the veil lifted, and it may even begin to let in light for those on the other side. If less of us waited for Death to lift the veil and followed the gleam of unconditional love ourselves, perhaps we would start to live in a world with no veil at all: a world full of irresistible toddler tummies and unprompted gifts of autumn leaves. 🌿
Angela Firman
Writer, editor. Diagnosed at 33 and 37. DCIS, Sage III, ER+, PR+, and then MBC/Stage IV, HER2+.
Angela was a teacher and school leader serving low-income communities for 11 years. After her first cancer diagnosis gave her the nudge she needed to pivot careers, she went back to school to become a freelance editor. She often said she couldn’t think of anything better than reading and writing for a living. In addition to copyediting WILDFIRE, she was an Associate Editor for Yellow Arrow Publishing. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Open Minds Quarterly, You Might Need To Hear This, and Press Pause. Angela passed away on September 25, 2025.
“Beyond the Veil” is published in Wildfire Journal’s 2021 “Grief & Acceptance” issue. Get the digital issue in our shop. Available in the subscribers’ library as well.