Jim Chastain

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LeAnn

I met my wife LeAnn while we were attending college at Oklahoma State University. She was a sophomore, and I was a junior. We had both signed up to be part of Varsity Review, which is a singing and dancing show, and her sorority (Chi Omega) was paired up with my fraternity (Delta Tau Delta). I was there to meet girls, and she was there, I assume, to meet guys, bond with girls in her house, and have fun.

I asked her out a couple of months later when the opportunity arose. She hesitated at first (her friends said I “wasn’t her type”), but she eventually agreed. Our first date was for coffee in March of 1985, almost twenty-four years ago. We began dating steadily a few months later. During my senior year, we were inseparable.

Upon completing my degree, I was accepted into law school at the University of Oklahoma. LeAnn still had one year to go. So I headed off to Norman, while she stayed behind in Stillwater. This “long-distance” relationship (a one hour and fifteen minute drive) was tough, but it only lasted one semester. I asked her to marry me during Christmas break, December, 1986, and, incredibly, she said yes.

LeAnn joined me in Norman after Christmas. She completed her degree by doing her student teaching at Norman High. That semester she lived in an apartment with our friends Polly and Shellie. We married in the summer, on July 25, 1987, and have lived in Norman ever since. I was twenty three years old at the time, and LeAnn was twenty-two.

We spent the remainder of our twenties like most other young marrieds do: getting used to married life; completing our education (I received my law degree in 1989, while LeAnn obtained her Master’s Degree in Mathematics at OU that same year, earning straight A’s); scrambling to find jobs; getting established in our community; and starting a family. Our daughter Maddye was born in 1991, and Ford was born three years later, in 1994.

As we hit our thirties, LeAnn and I were still living a fairly normal life. It was a crazy time, of course, as we were busy raising kids while balancing marriage, work, friendships, church, and our personal interests. I was working as a lawyer at various places and attempting to establish myself as a writer. LeAnn was multitasking, as wives/mothers tend to do. In addition to her mom responsibilities and volunteer duties, she taught night classes at several different colleges. And she worked for a time at a church, organizing women’s  book studies.  

But while we were in our middle thirties, during the hustle and bustle of life, cancer came and knocked on our door. I was thirty-seven years old. LeAnn was only thirty-six, which is way too young to be suddenly thrust into a new role, the wife of a seriously ill husband.

I have described those early years and how they affected me in my memoir, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France. But as with practically everyone who steps into the unenviable role of caretaker, LeAnn’s story is lesser known.

It would be nearly impossible for me to tell you that story. I’m too close to it, to be honest, and I’m pretty sure LeAnn wouldn’t want me to anyway. But I can tell you this: it’s as heroic as any story I know, much more so than mine.

I can give you a brief sketch of LeAnn, however. That is, I can tell you about some of her best qualities and a few of her primary interests, the stuff that helps make her the incredible person she is.

In addition to being easy on the eyes, LeAnn is smart. She’s hardworking and tough. She’s adventurous and fun. She’s generous and kind-hearted. She loves people deeply. She’s a devoted wife and a wonderful mom. She’s my best friend and has been for nearly a quarter of a century. I don’t know who or where I would be without her.

LeAnn enjoys book clubs, for she reads dozens of books each year. She’s genuinely interested in other cultures. She’s a certified scuba diver and loves to go diving in Mexico. She’s the Math Counts coach at her middle school, and her team is one of the best in the state. She’s also a runner, having completed her first half marathon last year.

And as for the cancer years, those years that have stretched from her mid-thirties to the age of forty-three, well, what can I say? She’s been severely tested, that’s for sure. No one steps into a marriage expecting to deal with the kinds of issues LeAnn has had to deal with at such a young age. In addition to all the craziness that comes with being a mother, teacher, friend, and human being with dreams of her own, LeAnn has had to drop everything in her life, time after time, in order to help me.

It’s a lonely, thankless job, being the “caretaker,” a job that’s so big and exhausting and overlooked that it’s nearly impossible to describe it in words. The best I can do is to give you a sense of it from a poem I wrote in 2007.        

The Caretaker

If I told you how many needles
they’ve stuck in me
in the name of making me well
you’d probably never believe it.

If I told you of the drugs
I’ve ingested or the poisons
they’ve pumped through my veins,
you’d wonder if it was possible.

If I told you of the radiation
that had seeped through my body,
via x-rays, scans and “therapies,”
you’d call me a monster.

If I told you of the surgeries
I’ve endured and the scars I wear,
you might question God
or, more likely, your faith.

If I detailed the vomiting, the bills,
and how often I’ve been told,
“I’m sorry, it’s cancer,”
you’d call me a hopeless cause.

If I told you of the conversations
I’ve had with my wife, my kids,
my parents, family and friends,
you’d walk away.

If I told you these things,
if I counted them all up
and then disclosed the final tally
you’d give me up

because life wouldn’t make sense anymore.

So I’ll keep all the counting to myself,
because I need you to hang in there
with me, playing that major
or minor role in the screenplay.

But if you wanted to know more,
if you somehow convinced me
to reveal the things I’ve seen,
to divulge those horrible numbers,

and then if you needed confirmation,
you could fact-check with my wife,
who witnessed and endured
these same things.

She brought the cold rags
for my forehead, the pans
to throw up in, the pills
I was to take with my meals.

She bandaged my wounds,
emptied my drains,
made impossible phone calls
and arrangements for the kids.

She cried over the bills,
set up impractical payment plans,
drove me to my appointments
and slept by my hospital bed.

Ask her. She’ll tell you.
She was the one who remained
ever-so-patient when people asked,
“So how’s Jim?”

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