Cancer? Injury? Divorce? These Minnesotans celebrate their 'dark' anniversaries

CATHY WURZER: Let me ask you something. Would you celebrate losing your job, getting hit by a car, breaking your ankle? For some Minnesotans, making note of life's morbid anniversaries has helped them make sense of their past. Our producer, Gretchen Brown, talked to a few of them.

GRETCHEN BROWN: When you have cancer, like I did two years ago, the doctors and nurses built in little celebrations for you, so you remember that while you almost died, you are not currently doing so.

Traditionally, one of those celebrations is the last day of chemo. But the thing was I still had to go do chemo. And this was in the middle of another COVID surge. So no one was with me to celebrate it, and my nurse was wearing a hazmat suit.

I also always thought that the day they told me I was cancer-free would be the best day of my life. I was only 28 at the time, so it was a pretty low bar, but still. I would wake up from my hospital bed, and my surgeon would be standing there saying, we did it, Gretchen. Our national nightmare is over.

I had to ask my surgeon myself if I could be considered cancer-free. He said I have no evidence of disease, which is cancer speak for you're good for now, but like no guarantees or anything. Those dates don't feel significant to me. Not really. They didn't live up to the hype.

Instead I celebrate my diagnosis date. I call it my cancerversary. This weekend, I will drink beer with friends, and eat cake, and celebrate the day my life changed in a big way. It'll be my second year doing all that. And some people, to be honest, find celebrating my cancer diagnosis morbid, as if I'm celebrating that cancer happened to me. And that's not really the intent, but I can't go back to a life before I had cancer, even if I wanted to. I talked to some people who get it.

ARIANNA: My name is Arianna, and I live in Saint Paul, but my heart is always in South Minneapolis. It was five years ago on July 17th that I was in a really bad car accident. And it happened while I was on the job, and it happened because I was burnt out. I blacked out. I hit my head. I fractured my spine in four places and sprained my neck pretty severely. I'm still by the side of the road and had this thought of like, OK, something's got to change if this is happening because of my job. This is going to change the rest of my life, and this has to start now.

GRETCHEN BROWN: It wasn't something she always celebrated. But it's something she's come around to.

ARIANNA: Because in years past, I'm never really sure how it's going to hit me. What's the body keeps the score kind of memory going to be? I realized this year that it is something they want to celebrate. And so I planned a bunch of stuff around it, like I went and got my hair done, and went and got a massage, and made sure that I was like taking care of my body still. And took myself out to a nice dinner and just was like really present like with my housemates who have been a big part of my recovery.

RICK: My name is Rick, and I live in Shoreview, Minnesota. And each year, my wife buys me a bouquet of flowers on the day that my previous divorce became official.

GRETCHEN BROWN: He says divorce is something that is taboo in his family. And at first, he felt pretty bad about it.

RICK: There was that sense of like, man, this just sucks and is terrible. And like maybe I screwed up. Maybe I did something wrong. But also, it helped me realize that at the same time, I was like, well, this also reminds me that now, yes, I definitely want to be married to someone that wants to be with me. So it like galvanized that like, yes, I do want what was there or what we were going to have. And it also made me feel much more strongly about wanting to be a dad.

GRETCHEN BROWN: His tradition started as a joke, and it's been going on now for years. Rick says his wife has given him some valuable perspective.

RICK: We like to celebrate that that relationship had come to a close, so that ours could turn into what we have today.

GRETCHEN BROWN: For Rick and Arianna, this isn't some sort of toxic positivity way of looking at things. They're not erasing what been through.

ARIANNA: Something that always really stuck with me is that there's a lesson around grief. That our grief never actually gets smaller. It doesn't go away. It might change shape. But like the amount that's there, I don't think it goes away. But what does happen is that your life can grow bigger around it.

GRETCHEN BROWN: I can relate with that. Celebrating my cancerversary is my way of living big. Trying to rewire my brain around my trauma. I can't say for sure it's working yet, but I'll keep you posted. That was our producer Gretchen Brown, who celebrates two years since her cancer diagnosis today. And she's hosting a party. She would love to hear how you're making sense of your own taboo anniversaries if you have them. Send us a note, again, looking for taboo anniversaries. minnesotanow@npr.org.