While we hold our secrets close to our hearts, sometimes they slip out. Five stories

My dear friend, Sarah, was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer shortly after the birth of her second child. She didn’t want to worry her elderly parents, so she didn’t tell them. Nor did she tell her siblings who lived near them so they wouldn’t even accidentally find out. She certainly didn’t tell her friends.

Only her husband, a few siblings, and I knew. And the only reason I knew was because we were working together on our older friend’s sheva brachos shortly before she was scheduled for surgery. As we were preparing the day before the event, Sarah casually mentioned that she wouldn’t be there the following evening because there was something important she needed to take care of that couldn’t wait.

That’s all she said. But at that moment, I knew. I knew she was sick. I even knew she had cancer. I knew that the reason she wasn’t attending the party was because she’d be in Sloan Kettering undergoing a procedure. To this day, 25 years later, I still don’t know how I knew all that.

Sarah was sick for three years, in and out of the hospital for treatment, making up stories each time so her parents wouldn’t suspect anything. They didn’t live nearby and she made sure to schedule her visits to them with enough time between chemo sessions so she could keep up the charade.