Elaine Mansfield, Leaning Into Love
Elaine Mansfield is honest in her book about her husband Vic’s struggle with lymphoma. She writes of her growing fatigue from being his constant caregiver over the years, and then, after his death, of learning to live with the emptiness of the home they shared.
What I look for in a memoir about cancer and grief is honesty. I don’t want sugar. Sugar doesn’t give me real hope. Sugar melts away when tears begin to fall. I want truth because I want to learn about the stress and despair that caregivers have to endure as they take care of someone with terminal cancer, and I want to know how she survived when the future she dreamed about was taken away.
Even with people who are as determined as Elaine and Vic, cancer often wins the physical battle. Elaine writes of her struggle to hold on as hope in his survival began to fade and her longing to let go because she was exhausted and coming apart as she kept pushing herself to help Vic keep going. After he dies, she wrote, “His gentle passage opens my heart and stills my mind” She bends but does not break: “The downward pull of grief persists, but I often touch the slippery edge and rise above instead of being sucked under.”
The book is divided into Before and After, with death as the turning point. There are no magic words here that will erase cancer’s trauma on families or ease death’s sorrow, but she offers insights — stay attentive, do not give up when treatments go on for longer than you expect, screw up your courage and do what needs to be done, even if it scares you, even if you are resentful.
After Vic’s death, Elaine began writing about their shared journey with cancer as a way as understanding what went on. She describes how tired she was as Vic increasingly needed more medical care, the late night dashes to a distant hospital, and the lack of time to do what she needed to do to recharge her energy. She acknowledges her feelings of guilt when she takes time for herself instead of doing another small thing for Vic that he would enjoy. Elaine writes, “If we dare to love, then we will grieve. Mortality is the shadow that falls when the sun shines.”
Sprinkled through the narrative are the words of Elaine and Vic’s spiritual mentors — Anthony Damiani, Marion Woodman, and the Dalai Lama, as well as words from the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke and Naomi Shihab Nye, including Nye’s astounding “Kindness” poem.
Elaine finds solace in the woods after Vic’s passing. She writes of her desire for daily exercise and cooking healthy food, even though, on some days, these are the last things she wants to do. She writes of her ongoing practice of meditation and spending time in solitude. She speaks of volunteering to help with a hospice group, and of the support she received from her community of friends, both during Vic’s illness and after his death.
Cancer and the death of a spouse change our lives and sends them in a different direction. Six weeks after Vic died, Marion Woodman wrote to Elaine: “Something is emerging that could not have happened in your old life.” Each year Elaine raises Monarch butterflies, watches their transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, and feels her own life undergoing a similar transformation.
Elaine’s words move with the flow of a powerful river that carries us into a deeper understanding of life.
© 2025 Mark Liebenow
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