According to my friend, the woman told her story in an oddly stilted and monotonous manner, keeping her eyes downcast, as if reading from an invisible script, auditioning for a part she had no hope of ever getting. But she had everyone’s full attention, my friend said. You could’ve heard a pin drop, and of course we were all aghast at what we were hearing. When the woman finished, the others started talking. Not everyone, my friend said. There were some, like me, who didn’t say anything (I confess I hadn’t the faintest idea what to say to this poor woman), but the ones who did speak were in agreement. The woman was mistaken. Surely the children—who knew their own father, after all—were right, and the woman, who in their opinion must be completely wrong, should listen to them. There was another explanation for her husband’s behavior, a perfectly obvious one, which was that it was just his way of coping, they said. And didn’t it happen all the time. Isn’t that what people did, they put on a bright face, they tried to act normal, to act cheerful, they hid their tears—and why? Because they thought this would make it easier for the patient and help her keep up her own spirits, that’s why. And that’s what her husband was doing, the people in the group explained to her. Nothing sinister about it. And hadn’t she said herself how well he’d been taking care of her, that he was always there for her, that he couldn’t do enough for her, and if that wasn’t solid proof of his love—

The woman didn’t argue with these people, reported my friend. In fact, she made no response to their comments, except to nod now and then, her eyes still always downcast, a crooked half-smile fixed on her face. She knew.

Now, here was this woman who’d gone and done the difficult thing, my friend said to me. She had looked at the truth, and she had not flinched. She had spoken the unspeakable. She had named names. And here were all these people, gaslighting her. They weren’t being honest—not with her, not with themselves. Because they could not accept the truth, they had to bury it under a load of BS.

And it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened in that room, my friend said. Always the same inane advice, the same clichés about the power of positive thinking and miracles happening and not giving up and letting cancer win. And all it did was remind her how hard it was for people to accept reality, my friend said to me. Our overpowering need either to stick our heads in the sand or to sentimentalize everything, she said.