Loss and Cancer
- Actor John Travolta wished his late wife, Kelly Preston, a happy mother’s day. Preston died of breast cancer after a very private two-year battle with the disease in July 2020.
- Losing a spouse to cancer can cause immeasurable pain, but it's important to try to have uncomfortable conversations with your loved one if they're open to it during their cancer battle.
- One member of the SurvivorNet community told us that moving forward after the loss of a loved one does not mean you have to move on.
The Grease star lost his wife, actress Kelly Preston, to breast cancer in July 2020. In a social media post for Mother’s day, Travolta shared a touching video tribute for his beloved late partner.
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John Travolta Opens Up about Loss
Preston was 57 when she died, and she kept her two-year battle with the disease very private. We don’t know a lot about the specifics of Preston's diagnosis, stage of the cancer or her treatment, but, since breast cancer is the center of much cancer research, we do know a lot about treatment options, risk factors and screening techniques.The Unique Features of Breast Cancer: Deciding the Right Course of Treatment
On announcing her death, Travolta noted at the time that he like his late wife would opt for a quiet, private road ahead as he began to grieve his wife. The actor posted to Instagram: "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don't hear from us for a while. But please know that I will feel your outpouring of love in the weeks and months ahead as we heal."
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Travolta has been open about struggling after his wife’s death in the past and advises people dealing with grief to take the space they need to heal.
"I felt very saturated with the sadness of everyone else that I didn't know what to do," Travolta previously told Esquire. "The most important thing that you can do to help another when they are in their mourning is to allow them to live it and not complicate it with yours."
Losing a Spouse to Cancer
Losing a loved one to cancer can cause immeasurable pain as Travolta can surely attest to. And while it's difficult to imagine life without someone like your significant other, it can be important to have difficult conversations with your loved one in advance if both parties are willing to talk.
No one knows this better than John Duberstein who lost his wife, writer Nina Riggs, to metastatic triple negative breast cancer. He previously told SurvivorNet all he wished for while she was suffering was for things to go back to the way they were but Riggs had already accepted her new normal.
The Toughest Conversations: Losing a Spouse to Cancer
"I really wanted things to go back to normal, whatever that meant," Duberstein said. "She was not for that. She wanted to embrace the existence that she had, even before she knew she was going to die imminently.
“I did not want to talk about what was going to happen with me after Nina died. Nina is the one that really brought it up, she brought it up a number of times. She wanted to make sure that I knew that it was OK… she really wanted me to have another relationship after she was gone."
Duberstein said even with the pain of losing Riggs and his hesitancy to talk about it at the time, he's so glad his wife started those seemingly uncomfortable conversations.
"In retrospect, I can't even explain how glad I am that I had that," Duberstein said. "And I think, across the board, the people who have had those conversations who I know who have lost a spouse are immeasurably glad that they did."
There's definitely no one way to cope with the loss of a spouse, but Doug Wendt shared his thoughts on grief in a previous interview with SurvivorNet after losing his wife, Alice, to ovarian cancer.
"We're never gonna move on, I don't even think I want to move on, but I do want to move forward," Wendt said. "That's an important distinction, and I encourage anybody who goes through this journey as a caregiver and then has to face loss, to think very carefully about how to move forward."
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