My 18-year-old daughter passed away from neuroblastoma after nine years of treatment, an experience I shared in my essay, “Are You Happy?” (Nonfiction, Intima, Spring/Summer 2025). The natural course of her disease allowed our family to make memories, savor her life, and share existential talks. Her decline was painful but allowed us to say all the things. Our closeness was deepened by the care she required in her last two years of life.
The week of her death, I was in the ICU waiting area as a social worker was meeting with parents whose child had been flown in by helicopter. I thought to myself, “What a nightmare for these parents to be suddenly thrown into this world.” The irony of this hit me: I was in the position of “unluckiest parent alive” as my daughter was imminently dying.
I lost a child who was extremely unhealthy, her body damaged by years of treatment and cancer spreading to bones and organs. As I considered our situation, I became convinced that the most painful loss would be losing a healthy child suddenly. There is no acclimation or processing. There is no goodbye.
In “A Selfless Goodbye” (Field Notes, Intima, Fall 2014), Pooja Reedy addresses how we consider a good, brave, or unselfish death. Reedy begins her piece referencing an end-of-life discussion she had with her father as a teen. That discussion contained an assumption by Reedy and her father that a quick death is optimal and noble. However, a case she witnessed as a medical student causes her to reconsider. She watches as the Trauma Room staff struggle to save a middle-aged man struck by a car on the highway. The resuscitation is unsuccessful and the man dies. The event allowed her to reflect on the prior talk with her dad and whether an abrupt end is selfless or good. As she considered the man’s death, she understood the heartache for his survivors: there was no goodbye.
Reedy acknowledges no simple answers in making “things easy” for a patient’s passing, balanced with a family’s need for a meaningful farewell. I agree with Reedy in how she ends her piece—the family needs to be able to say goodbye.
There is bravery in enduring. There is bravery in leaving. My daughter manifested both. She endured for years, yet she chose how and when to end her life in her last week. I experienced the perfect goodbye the morning she left, but prior to that moment she gave us thousands of perfect goodbyes in the years we cared for her.
Holly Cantley
Holly Cantley became a patient advocate through the experience of her daughter being a cancer patient for almost a decade. Her seventeen-year career in medical professional liability claims allowed her to deeply consider the variables that impact patient care and the work of physicians and medical staff. Cantley, who has a degree in Biological Science and Biotechnology, is married with three daughters, one who will forever be 18.