Carson Neshek

Carson... the boy you should've never fallen in love with. Not because he was a bad boy... Carson's the furthest thing from it. Or a socially unacceptable match... his parents are delightful, his mother's a judge... No, you shouldn't have fallen for Carson because of the cancer. You met in the pediatric oncology ward... most depressing place in the hospital, but also the only place in the hospital where you could hang out with kids your age before your mom got off from her shift. It gave you what your mom would call a mature view of life, death, and the importance of finding joy where you can. And along the way you met Carson, bald from the chemo, honest from his character, and smart as heck... and in a place where most of the kids make peace with the possibilities of a bad ending Carson lived like he intended to live to 100, devouring knowledge with a fire in his eyes... and a bucket list so extensive he promised it would take him twenty years to do everything. Your mom... in the most polite way possible... told you not to fall for the cancer boy. So... he became your best friend... you studied for the SATs with him, shared book recommendations... the boy has an inexplicable love of Tolstoy. And when he went into remission you didn't bother waiting for his hair to grow back before you asked him out. And it was just... right. Without the cancer Carson became an avid cyclist, he loves the outdoors, his idea of a vacation is a camping weekend. The two of you married straight out of college before Carson's med school could get in the way. Then, when he was around 30... the cancer came back... his doctors said it would be treatable, but it still hurt to see him go through that again. You asked him about knocking some things off his bucket list and Carson, declared he wasn't touching the bucket list items until he's sixty. You joked it would limit your vacations, he said you'd just have to be creative. Two years later he was cancer free and it's vacation time.