My name is Brett, I am a 41-year-old widower. I am currently employed as Director of Merchandise Planning at Tillys (the clothing company) at their corporate office in Irvine, CA. I have been employed at Tillys for close to 25 years, I started as a store employee in 1998, and moved to the corporate office in 2001. In June of 2010, my world was upended when Sonja Allen was hired to be the new buyer in Girls. The moment I saw and met her it was like the world around me stopped dead in its tracks and there was only her. I was dumbstruck by her beauty, her carefree attitude and did I mention her beauty? This was hands down the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I did my best to act like a big shot, hoping to impress her – that failed, she was not impressed and later told me I actually came off as kind of annoying and rude.
For the next three years we would talk often, I would find reasons to go to her desk and chat about everything and nothing. As time went by, we started texting outside of work, becoming the best of friends. I was hopelessly in love, but I was terrified to make a move, afraid of losing what had turned into my best friend and most trusted confidant. I was introduced to her two daughters, Paige and Jolie, and whenever they came into the office, I was quick to go over and chat them up too. After the three years of flirting back and forth, me talking to her about whatever girl I was dating, hoping she would be jealous, Sonja drew a line in the sand. She told me she was tired of waiting and we needed to talk about what we were doing. After she put me on the spot like that, I asked her out on our first date around Memorial Day 2013.
At dinner, we talked about everything you’re not supposed to talk about on a first date, we talked future, kids, work, risking our friendship, risk of breaking up, all of it. In the end, we had a nice dinner and went back to my house to watch a movie. I awkwardly tried to kiss, and she shut me down by looking at me weird and backing her head away. But when I walked her to her car, I asked if she wanted to dance, and we danced under the streetlights, and I kissed her. The moment our lips met I knew I was finished. After three years my plan had finally worked, Sonja was now my girlfriend.
Knowing that word of us dating would possibly mean changes at work, changes we didn’t want to make, we kept our relationship to ourselves and only a few special people to us knew. I lived in Mission Viejo, CA and Sonja lived about an hour away in Eastvale, CA. Sometimes we would go out after work, but mostly I went to her house every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to see her and the girls. After about three more years of dating, I asked Sonja to marry me, and thankfully she said yes. My horrible proposal is a great story for another blog post, she should have said no but she said yes.
We were married after about 5 months after getting engaged and obviously we went public with our secret immediately after the engagement. Instantly I’m a husband and a dad to two of the most wonderful daughters ever created. Sonja is my entire world, my partner, my love, my wife.
In January of 2021, four and half years of being married, Sonja notices a lump on her left breast. She goes in for a blood test and a mammogram. Both tests come back normal, but she is insistent that something is wrong. After a couple weeks, we both go in and demand another mammogram. This time they find something and do a biopsy. Before we can even process this, the doctor calls and says its cancerous and we need to be back in the doctor’s office in the morning. When we get there, the doctor pulls up the first mammogram that shows nothing wrong, then she brings up the second, separated by only a few weeks and there are three huge blossoms. The doctor told us that had Sonja waited even another few weeks to get the second mammogram she would have died because of the rate of growth of the tumors.
The plan was chemo for 16 weeks, a fully mastectomy surgery, 15 weeks of radiation, then plastic surgery a few months after. We were in for a long fight, basically most of 2021 and then we would start 2022 healthy and happy this battle was over. We started chemo a few days later. I use the term “we” loosely since I wasn’t doing chemo, but it had an effect on me too. I was beyond scared, but I couldn’t really show that, I needed to be strong for Sonja, but I knew it was possible that my world could explode.
Chemo was very hard on Sonja, she lost all her hair after the second treatment and sitting in that chair across from her, watching her get chemo was heart wrenching. I was powerless to do anything other than tell her I loved her and hold her as often as she would let me. Plus, we were right in the middle of COVID so she couldn’t have visitors, it was just me, Jolie, Paige – who lived in her own apartment by this time, and Sonja. We were supported by so many, my family, our work colleagues.
Sonja’s birthday was August 22, a Sunday and we celebrated her with some cupcakes. On August 23rd, Jolie came downstairs and told me Sonja was acting weird, saying she didn’t recognize her. I went upstairs to talk to her, and she didn’t know me either, she was trying to say something about the controller, but I couldn’t understand. It was 9 o’clock at night but I decided I needed to take to the ER.
We got to ER, and they brought us back really quick because of Sonja’s mental state. They guess early on that she’d had a stroke which was terrifying in itself. After a while though, she got a few cat scans, and the results came back very bad. The cancer that used to be in only her left breast had spread into her spine and into her brain. The prognosis was Sonja would be dead within a few months. I don’t think I heard everything the doctor was saying after the word “spread”, at least in that moment but I have re-lived it many times since and know in could say all the words verbatim.
I had to go home and tell me daughters that their mother, my wife, was going to die within months. Needless to say, it was not a happy conversation.
Sonja was moved out of the ER and got a bed upstairs, and the news went from horrible to unspeakable very quickly. The doctors that told me she only had months to live, said he got it wrong and was now telling me would die within days. If I wasn’t sitting in a chair, I think I would have fell down, my legs turned to jelly.
I then had to go home and tell my daughters again, that we don’t have months, we have days. It was horrible the first time but doing it a second time was like a knife through my chest.
Sonja passed away in the hospital on September 6th, we were in the hospital for 15 days and I had to sign Hospice paperwork that deprived my wife of food and water. After I signed, Sonja lasted 11 days and it only deepened the guilt I feel. My wife, my whole world was gone, and my life was destroyed.
According to Sonja’s will, which we finalized when she was first diagnosed, Jolie would leave my house and live with my oldest daughter Paige and her husband. So, in the process of losing my wife, I lost my daughter too and my h9ouse which was normally so full of love and laughter is now suddenly empty and quiet.
As if it were some consolation, the doctors let me know that this shouldn’t have happened. Sonja’s cancer spreading at this late of date after chemo was 1 in 10 million chance. After doing further testing, they actually told me that her breast cancer was gone, we had beaten it. And the really interesting (yes, they actually used that word) thing is that usually when cancer spreads it changes, like if it spread to her lungs, it would be a different kind of cancer, basically a change in its structure. But the cancer in Sonja’s spine and brain was actually the same cancer as her breast cancer, its makeup did NOT change when it spread, which made Sonja’s case actually 1 in 20 million. As scientists this interests them, it did nothing to improve my situation. It was Sonja’s wish to be cremated but it was my wish to have someplace to go and visit her, so I bought 2 plots in the cemetery, one for me and one for her and I buried her about a week after she died.
I am still not over it, I’m still madly in love with a woman who has been gone for 1 ½ years, I’m not sure I will ever fully recover. I not only lost my wife, but my family as well. The person I was when I was with Sonja is gone forever, I still don’t recognize the person I see in the mirror every day. Like I said, she was my entire world and I’m struggling to find purpose in a world without her.
That’s a long-winded way of saying my wife died of breast cancer in 2021 and I lost my partner and my children all at once.
So….. what’s your story?