Even after I was declared cancer-free, things didn’t normalize. They got worse. By then, our unhappiness became self-perpetuating. We were bickering all the time. It was as if we were both thinking, This relationship is terrible. It must be the other person’s fault.

On some level, Didi later realized, she was angry. Not at me, exactly, but at what I represented—another potential tragedy. When they say you marry your father, this isn’t supposed to be what it means. And then she felt guilty for feeling that way, and I felt guilty for being the cause of all that.

There was an ice storm. It wasn’t all bad—we had moments of returning to our pre-cancer selves—but it was far from what either of us wanted from our marriage. Then last summer, Didi spoke up. It wasn’t the first time we had had an argument like this, but this was the mother of all of them.

We were in Wyoming—a fishing trip and family vacation—and Abby was asleep. It started out as a conversation about Didi’s work, but somehow the tension started rising, and the next thing I knew, Didi was crying and screaming. The gist of what she said was this: “This is a disaster. We are in the midst of a huge mess. I love you, but I don’t like you right now. I know you don’t like me, either, so don’t pretend you do. What the hell are we going to do?” Shouting and mutual accusations were exchanged. Long-simmering resentments were surfaced. The D-word was spoken.

In past relationships, this is the point at which I chickened out. I’d either blame the other person or pretend that the problem wasn’t a big deal. Didi wasn’t going to allow that.

It’s grossly oversimplified, but Didi had the courage to name the problem, and cancer gave me the guts to listen. We worked out some of the problems by ourselves and some in therapy (our own, not couples), and things got better.

What happened the next day was as much about making up after a fight as anything else, but it did foreshadow the thaw to come. Didi went fishing with a guide friend of ours named Tim Warren. I took Abby to the Teton County Fair. We arranged for a babysitter that night, and I went to meet Didi and Tim at the takeout for dinner.

Didi didn’t catch many fish, but she had a fabulous day. It was the first time she’d taken a day off, on her own, since Abby was born and I got sick. Three-plus years. She and Tim had floated the Snake River through Grand Teton National Park, one of the loveliest stretches of water on the planet. When she came off the river, Didi was sunburned and beaming. She looked reborn.

That night, the three of us went for burritos and margaritas. We ate way too much, and drank way too much. The next morning, Didi and I woke up with hangovers, and spent the better part of the day watching DVDs in bed with Abby. It was sublime.

TALKING TO ABBY
Sometime, I’m going to have to tell Abby. I know how it’s going to come up, or I think I do. One day she’s going to ask me or Didi, out of the blue, why I can’t ice skate with her or go skiing with her. But what do you say? My impulse is to tell the truth. But is it right to worry a 4-year-old that her father might die? No parent can guarantee their child that they won’t die, but most can make the pledge in good faith. Cancer patients can’t do that.

I’ve gone around and around in my head about what to say, and I haven’t come up with a satisfying answer yet. I hope, if I can stay healthy and make it to five years out—she’ll be 6 at that point—maybe then I’ll feel comfortable telling her what happened and saying, “Daddy is fine now, and he’s not going to die for a long, long time.” Once I feel like I can say that, and mean it, that’s when I’ll tell her.

“THANK YOU”
Last month, I celebrated my third anniversary cancer-free, and my 42nd birthday. On the 17th, Didi and I went out for dinner, to Balthazar, and had a nice meal and some wine, and were feeling good.

It was a warm spring night, and we decided to walk home. We could have walked any number of ways, but as it happens, we walked up Broadway. It occurs to me only now that we walked right past the spot where I had slipped on the ice.

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Table of Contents: May 28, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!