← Modern Love
Modern Love
Finding the Magic, Just in Time
00:40:53
When Clare Cory was a young girl, she dreamed of love. But by the time she turned 50, Clare hadn’t found it. Still, she took a look around and found she was happy and was looking forward to the future. Clare fell in love with life. She saw a flower bloom, watched sunlight sparkle on the water and held her cat on her lap. Her heart was full. Then, to her surprise, as Clare faced cancer and was about to turn 60, romance arrived. On today’s episode, Clare explains how she fell in love and began sharing her life at a time when she least expected. This episode is adapted from Clare’s Tiny Love Story from 2024, "Finally Finding ‘The Magic.'"
Loading summary
Transcript118 lines
- [00:00]
Ollie
With so much going on right now, it's easy to put wellness on the back burner. Prioritize you by making self care a little more delightful with Ollie. Get your essential vitamins and minerals with our Women's Multigummy. Keep your mood upbeat with vitamin D and hello Happy. And get some much needed rest with Ollie. Sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. Do wellness on your terms. Whatever that looks and feels like for you. Find Ollie at a Walmart or Target near you or@ollie.com that's o l l-y.com these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose. Treat any disease.
- [00:35]
Claire Corey
Love NOW and did you fall in love last? I love love but stronger than anything. For the love love can I love you more than anything?
- [00:45]
Anna Martin
You're still love love. From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Each week we bring you stories inspired by the Modern Love column. We talk about love, lust, heartbreak, and all the messiness of relationships. When Clare Corey was a young girl growing up on a farm in Montana, she dreamed about falling in love.
- [01:10]
Claire Corey
We lived in a single wide trailer. It was a little bit crowded, so I slept on the couch. And I would often look out the window at the full moon. And it's very beautiful. And I would watch the moon sail across the sky. And me being the hopeless romantic child that I was, I envisioned that somewhere out there under that same moon, was the man for me.
- [01:35]
Anna Martin
Just after she graduated college, Claire got engaged. But then right before the wedding, her fiance called it off. After that, she spent years, decades, even, trying to make various relationships work. But none of them did. So eventually, she stopped worrying about it and decided to focus on her career. After her 50th birthday, she looked back on her life and felt happy.
- [02:01]
Claire Corey
You know, you think, wow, I've come a long way in life and I still have a long way to go.
- [02:05]
Don
That feeling led Claire to write into the Modern Love column saying she'd finally fallen in love, but not with some guy. Instead, it was a love for life itself. She thought maybe her love story was over.
- [02:19]
Claire Corey
But then the most improbable, bizarre series of events occurred.
- [02:26]
Anna Martin
Some of those bizarre events were scary. Her health took a dramatic turn. But some were beautiful beyond anything she could have ever imagined. Today, we tell you the rest of Claire's love story. Stick with us.
- [02:51]
Dr. Horton
Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of their national red tag sales event going on right now through January 19, stop by any of their participating communities and find select red tag homes at incredible pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton difference@drhorton.com that's drhorton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder.
- [03:23]
David
David taught himself how to make bread. Good bread. He wanted to get even better. So he asked ChatGPT on Expedia if there's such a thing as a bread vacation. Chatgpt said, sure. Do you want to go to Normandy, Morocco, Ireland or Tuscany? And that's how David became a master pizzaiolo. You were made to learn new things. We were made to give you trip ideas with ChatGPT right in our app Expedia Made to travel.
- [04:01]
Anna Martin
Claire Corey, welcome to Modern Love.
- [04:03]
Claire Corey
Thank you so much and I really appreciate this opportunity.
- [04:07]
Anna Martin
So, Claire, we're here to talk about your love story. There are twists, there are turns. Things do not go as you expect. But I want to start at the beginning. When you were a kid growing up, you dreamed about falling in love. Paint a picture of that for me.
- [04:23]
Claire Corey
Yeah, so I'm the oldest of seven children and we grew up on a little farm in Montana. So I remember a lot of thoughts of romance rolling through my brain in those early years. And my sister and I, we were out on our. Our fake horses, you know, and that we had made out of sticks. Our stick horses, basically, of course. And so we both had husbands along for the ride. And mine was Jim and hers was Steve. And so I just imagined that one day, you know, I was going to be riding around in a truck with Jim and we were going to have a happily ever after.
- [05:05]
Anna Martin
I mean, I know that years later when you were in your 20s, you did have a brief engagement to a man. His name was was not Jim, his name was Roger. But that engagement didn't work out. Tell me, what did you love about Roger?
- [05:21]
Claire Corey
Oh, Roger was just a ton of fun. He was always laughing and he was always up for adventure. He was very funny. And we were in very different fields. He's in engineering and I was in psychology. But we supported one another through grad school. And so, you know, I thought, I felt like we were really good together. We were really solid. You know, I believed that we would grow old together.
- [05:48]
Anna Martin
Where did that certainty come from?
- [05:51]
Claire Corey
Good question, because apparently I was wrong. So our wedding was scheduled in May, and we had spent a lot of time preparing for that. And so we had everything lined up, and at the end of March, Roger woke up in the middle of the night, and he said, I can't do this. I said, what do you mean? You can't do what? And he said, well, you know, I can't get married. I can't go through with this wedding. And that began a whole lot of, shall we say, painful discussions about why. And I never got a really good answer as to why until a year later when we actually met in a park because I was going to sell the dress. I actually ended up giving it to somebody, but we met in a park, and I said, do you want to see the dress? And so I pulled the dress out, and he said, oh, my gosh. He said, it's so beautiful. And he said, do you know what we were missing? And I was like, no. And he said, we were missing the magic. We didn't have the magic.
- [07:03]
Anna Martin
Did you know what he meant when he said we were missing the magic? Did that track for you?
- [07:08]
Claire Corey
It did, to some degree, yes. I mean, to some degree. I was still trying to understand what had gone wrong. But, yeah, I did, because in between that time, I actually had met Don.
- [07:24]
Don
Okay, who's Don?
- [07:26]
Anna Martin
Who's he?
- [07:27]
Claire Corey
So I went to a training, and the trainer was a man named Don. And so I remember I'm a shy person, but I did approach him at the training to ask him a question about something, and we had a brief little conversation, and I didn't think much of it, but I thought, oh, wow, that's a really cool guy. But I think it was the training was a couple days. And so when the training ended, I remember he said something to me and. And he said, hey, do you want to get together for dinner sometime? And we had a lot in common. We work in similar fields. We just had a very deep connection. And I've often said to people that it was the best days of my life.
- [08:10]
Anna Martin
And what were you thinking as that was happening? Did you feel like those were the best days?
- [08:17]
Claire Corey
What I thought to myself was, oh, now I understand. This is why the relationship with Roger didn't work out. Because actually, the real person for me, the real. The man who really was the one for me, was still out there, and I just hadn't met him yet. And so that's how that romance began, which was a wonderful romance, but was also a brief romance.
- [08:40]
Anna Martin
Can you tell me why it ended? Why did you guys stop being in contact or seeing each other?
- [08:47]
Claire Corey
It was complicated by a lot of things. You know, I was Traveling a lot, and I had my job. And so it ended basically by lack of communication and letters. Again, this is in the days before email and cell phones and that kind of thing. So I remember writing him a letter and saying how hurt that I was. And I then was very depressed.
- [09:17]
Anna Martin
Did you try to get back out there dating wise at this time, or was that not at all a priority?
- [09:24]
Claire Corey
No, it was not. I was way too broken hearted to even think about that. And, you know, here I thought that I had found the answer to the whole reason why my relationship with Roger hadn't worked out. And now I really had found a relationship that was magical. And then it ended. And I really felt like, how could this happen to me twice?
- [09:47]
Anna Martin
These two heartbreaks relatively close to each other, almost back to back in the grand scheme. Did you feel your heart harden? Were you like, that's it, I'm not doing this anymore. It's not worth it?
- [10:05]
Claire Corey
I would say at that time, no, I was not ready to be done. It took probably another decade or so. And in the intervening years, I did have some men in my life who were truly good men. But the relationships didn't last. I would say maybe by the time I was in my mid-40s and I really started asking myself, what are you trying to do here? You know, looking back, I can see that my life shifted tracks at that time from a future that was about creating marriage and a family and a home to my being more of a career person, focused on my career and not so much a relationship.
- [10:52]
Anna Martin
Hmm. What were some of the things you were telling yourself that made you okay with this new version of your future, this version where you wouldn't find someone? How did it become all right?
- [11:04]
Claire Corey
Well, because I had to ask myself, what are you missing in your life? You know, I have a lot of good things in my life, and my life is going along very well. And yeah, I sort of had this empty spot in my heart or this empty place in my heart where I felt like a relationship would fill it up. But I thought, is something really missing in your life? And as I started looking around, I thought, I'm very content with where I am and who I am, and no, there's really nothing missing at all. And it felt like I had been beating my head against a wall for years trying to figure out how to make this relationship thing happen. And at some point you think, wait a minute, why are you be head all the time? You know, is this really worth it? And what are you missing when you're not beating your Head. And, well, you're missing living. You're missing life itself.
- [12:00]
Anna Martin
Did you ever feel lonely, though?
- [12:03]
Claire Corey
No.
- [12:04]
Anna Martin
Really? Really?
- [12:06]
Claire Corey
Yeah. I've never felt lonely, and maybe that's because I have a lot of siblings and friends and things. No, I did not feel lonely. Did I miss having a romantic partner in my life? Yes. You know, and I just want to, you know, be clear that this was not an easy process. Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it. So I can say that this was this idea of fulfilling romantic relationship had claw marks all over it. It was clawed to pieces before I could let go of it. Yeah. So, yeah.
- [12:41]
Anna Martin
And when you did let this claw marked thing go, was it liberating?
- [12:50]
Claire Corey
Yeah, absolutely. And I realized that there is a freedom in that and that I did feel liberated because I'm like, hey, I don't need to be looking for anybody. But it was hard to put hope back in the basket and shut the basket.
- [13:05]
Anna Martin
Hope.
- [13:05]
Claire Corey
Hope of having a romance, hope of having that fulfilling relationship that I'd always dreamed of. And I just stuffed it in the basket and shut the lid. But every now and again, you know, hope, it just keeps coming, and it would, you know, stick its head out of the basket and be waving at me. I'm like, get back in there. Shut that thing.
- [13:26]
Anna Martin
When you hit this, kind of coming to terms with being single for the rest of your life, kind of putting hope in the basket for the rest of your life, this hope for romantic partner, you know, did you take a look back on your life at this, at that point, and assess it, and if so, what did you see?
- [13:47]
Claire Corey
Well, I remember the year that I turned 50 was also the first time I ever traveled to Europe, and my brother and his wife were living in Germany, and my mom and I went to Europe, and that was a dream that I'd always had. And I remember thinking that, you know, my life is very full, things were good, and I was looking forward to a future that, you know, that seemed wide open with possibility. You know, not the possibility necessarily, because, again, hope is, you know, stay in the basket hope. All right, and. But a future of, you know, continuing to work. And, you know, someday I was going to, you know, retire. And what was I going to do then? And, you know, I had goals for myself. Pay off my house, you know, those kinds of things. 50 was a beautiful time.
- [14:36]
Anna Martin
And then just after you turned 52, you found out you have a rare type of breast cancer.
- [14:46]
Claire Corey
Yes.
- [14:47]
Anna Martin
What was that moment like for you?
- [14:52]
Claire Corey
Well, it changes your life forever. There's no doubt about it. It's the most aggressive form of breast cancer. It's called inflammatory breast cancer. And so I knew then that my life was contracting. What happened was my life went from looking a decade or more ahead to looking a day at a time.
- [15:27]
Don
Claire, when you got this diagnosis, what did that change for you?
- [15:32]
Claire Corey
You know, it's really interesting because I learned a lot about myself. You really don't know how you'll react until those situations happen. So I said a couple things to myself. Well, I'm just gonna keep working until I can't anymore, and I'm gonna keep exercising until I can't anymore, and I'll just keep doing what I'm doing until I can't anymore. So, you know, they scheduled chemo in such a way that your down days would be on the weekend. So I was able to continue working, and I'd go to chemo and go to work, and then, you know, come down on the weekend and get by Sunday afternoon, I was coming back up.
- [16:09]
Anna Martin
I mean, you're saying all of this like it's just a routine. You know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. But there had to be hard parts of this.
- [16:17]
Claire Corey
Oh, yeah, there are hard parts of it. Inflammatory breast cancer is a beast. It's a challenge. And I will say this inflammatory breast cancer, your breast enlarges. The cancer turns the breast purple. It was hard as a rock. I could feel it turning hard. It's ugly. And you have to walk around with it every single day. And so you start to realize that today is all that you've got. And if today is all that I've got, then I damn well better make this a good day, because I'm not given up what I got right now. And so what happened is that I realized that I have fallen in love with life itself. And I remember the day that I found out that I had progressed to stage four. I came home and I opened the door to my house, and I looked around at all my possessions, and I thought, wow, somebody's going to have to come in and give all of these things away. And so I started to look around at all the things that I was going to miss, and I thought, wow, I'm really going to miss that sunrise. I'm going to miss that sunset. I'm going to miss my colleagues at work. I'm going to miss my nieces and nephews growing up. That's still real hard one for me. I'm going to miss just these everyday moments of where you're you know, taking a walk and there's a beautiful flower. You run into somebody. Just so many things like that. I had a friend who was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, and she's passed away now. But she said to me, if I could turn back time and change this, I wouldn't. She said, it's given me too much. And I'm crying and crying and saying, how can you say that? I'm sure I'll never feel that way. But if I could turn back time, I wouldn't change it. It's given me too much. It's given me an appreciation for life. You know, I got out of the hospital in September and for various reasons, they hadn't let me take a shower. And, oh, my God. I came home and jumped in the shower. I was able to get in my car and drive my car to work. And I thought, this is one of the best days of my life, you know, And I'm showered. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's not like I don't get frustrated or upset or sad about things, because I do. But I've become more at peace with knowing that my life will end. But that also gives me the freedom to know how much I love this life and how much I love being alive. And I'm willing to fight for it with all I got because I just. I love it so much.
- [19:21]
Anna Martin
When we come back, Claire's life takes a totally unexpected turn towards romance. Stay with us.
- [19:46]
David
Ben hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a month. So during one of his restless nights, he booked a package trip abroad on Expedia. When he arrived at his beachside hotel, he discovered a miraculous bed slung between two trees and fell into the best sleep of his life. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights and hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia Made to travel.
- [20:16]
Dr. Horton
Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of their national red tag sales event going on right now through January 19th. Stop by any of their participating communities and find select red tag homes at incredible pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton Difference at Dr. Horton.com. that's Dr. Horton.com Dr. Horton America's Builder and Equal Housing Opportunity Builder.
- [21:01]
Anna Martin
Claire all through your 30s and 40s, you were hoping you'd fall in love. And then in your 50s, you're facing terminal cancer. And it sounds like, you did find love, just not how you expected. You found this love for life. And I feel like I can see the headline now. It's like, woman falls in love with life. Which would be a beautiful end to your story, except it's not the end to your story, right?
- [21:29]
Claire Corey
Yes, that is correct. So my heart was completely full. I want to say that because I have found a love for life, but at the most unexpected time in my life, when I don't feel good about my body, and I cannot imagine that anybody is going to find me attractive, certainly as a romantic partner, suddenly and very unexpectedly, I did find romance again. And it happened to be Dawn.
- [21:58]
Anna Martin
It happened to be a guy we've heard about before. Don. Remind us who Don is to you.
- [22:05]
Claire Corey
So Don was a person that I had a relationship with 27 years ago, and I was completely heartbroken when it ended. But I had gone on and, you know, made my peace with that. Yeah. And, you know, I'm a kind of person who, you know, always stays friends with people. And so we work in similar fields, and we were in one another's orbit, but we didn't talk very much. Maybe a couple times a year. I do remember I called him when I found out that I had cancer and let him know.
- [22:39]
Anna Martin
So when did Don come back into the picture? Like, how long after your diagnosis? Also, I just want to note for the listeners out there that every time I say his name, you smile in this beautiful way that lights you up, and it's lighting me up, too. How long after your diagnosis did he reenter your life?
- [22:58]
Claire Corey
Well, it was one year ago. And by this time, I'm well into a stage four situation. Stage four metastatic breast cancer. And so that's not exactly the kind of thing you put on your dating profile. You know, a little tough. You know, what had happened was he was going to be in Phoenix for a conference. He said, oh, well, geez, we ought to get together for dinner. You know, I haven't seen him for a long time. And so we did. We had a nice little dinner, whatever. And when I said goodbye to him, I honestly thought to myself, I'll probably never see him again. I think that this is it. But then this really weird thing happened, and it was kind of a little bit embarrassing, but so my employer was having the employee Christmas party, and I have gone alone to every single employee event for years. And so I thought, you know what? I want to go with somebody that I would enjoy going with. And I'm just. I would like to just go once to the employee Christmas party with somebody. And I remember I was driving to work, and it popped into my head to ask him to go with me. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because he doesn't even live in the same state. But it just kept bugging me and bugging me. And so I have to say that I felt like a high school girl, you know, at the Sadie Hawkins dance or whatever, you know, when you call and you ask the guy to go with you. And so I called him up and I said, you know, you know, I've always wanted to go to the Christmas party with somebody, and would you go with me? You know, and, you know, it's in a few weeks. And he said, yeah, sure. And we had this great time.
- [24:41]
Anna Martin
Was it everything you'd hoped for?
- [24:44]
Claire Corey
I like a lot of glitter and sparkle, and you get a lot of that on Christmas, you know. And our employee Christmas party was held at this really lovely hotel, and it was full of all the lights and all the sparkle, and I just. I don't know, I'm just. I'm just a fan of that kind of thing. And so it was just really fun to go with him and to be in this beautiful place and, you know, to have this experience. And the next day, we met up for breakfast, and so he starts saying to me, you know, he's been having. He's older than I am, and he'd been having a few health issues of his own. He said, you know, I think I'm going to be moving. And I said, oh. And he mentioned a few possible places, and Arizona was one of them. And I said, well, why would you want to go anywhere else? And I was kind of joking with him, you know. Well, about a month, six weeks later, I hear, well, I'm going to move to Arizona.
- [25:41]
Anna Martin
So how did you react when you got that news? That's kind of like great news.
- [25:47]
Claire Corey
Yeah, I was. Well, I was shocked. I was completely shocked because I wasn't sure he was really serious, you know. I said, well, look, I'll help you look for a place, and, you know, I'm here for you, you know. And so he rented a house, and he wasn't here yet. And he said, look, could you go pick up the keys for me? And I said, oh, yeah, I'll do that. And then I got this idea, and I said, you know what? I should get him a few things for when he gets here so that, you know, you know, when you move in and you don't have anything, you.
- [26:22]
Anna Martin
Know, right Claire, you got a lot going on. You have a lot going on. You have your full time job, you have your treatment, you have your own health. It means something that you saw this empty house and you were like, you know what? Amidst my full schedule, I think I'm gonna go out and buy him a blender or whatever you got him, you know?
- [26:39]
Claire Corey
Well, it was kind of like that. And my cousin has said to me since, oh, yeah, you know, going to fix up a guy's house before he moves in, yeah, you think that's just platonic, right? But. But it did come to pass that I was putting up a shower curtain in his vacant bathroom on Valentine's Day.
- [26:58]
Anna Martin
No way.
- [26:59]
Claire Corey
And he wasn't in town. And I said to myself, how crazy is this? But that is exactly what happened.
- [27:09]
Anna Martin
It's clear you and Don are reconnecting in a friendship way. When did you start. When did it start to become romantic? Was there a time you can point to where you were like, oh, there's more here than just two old friends, you know, coming back into each other's lives?
- [27:30]
Claire Corey
Well, ironically, it was about a week or two after my story was published, which is, you know, about being single. But we got this idea to go to this. It's called the Butterfly Wonderland, I think is what it's called. But we went and it is actually, it's just such a lovely place. And there's just butterflies everywhere and it's beautiful. There's flowers and greenery. It's a very lush sort of place compared to everywhere else in Arizona. And I felt. Felt this energy start to shift. And I'm like saying to myself, what is happening here? What is going on? There is something happening. And I now I felt like there was a door starting to open and I wasn't going to be able to shut it. And perhaps the old me would have said, I'm not walking through that because of all the complications and the messiness of it, because it was going to be messy. Truthfully, we're both in the probably the final seasons of our life because he is older than I am, and of course I have stage four cancer. And so the door opened and I felt like I had to walk through it.
- [28:45]
Anna Martin
When you say you felt the energy shift, like there was a door opening, did you have what we call a kind of like, define the relationship conversation? Did you turn to him on that bench and say, clearly something's happening, we should talk about it?
- [29:01]
Claire Corey
Well, I wish I could say I was that mature, but apparently I'm not.
- [29:06]
Anna Martin
Stuff never Gets to you.
- [29:07]
Claire Corey
So, no, we didn't. Yeah, no, I'm still in high school, so we didn't have a conversation on the pension, but I felt it and I knew it. But later, within a day or two, we did, and I said, well, let's just see if we can make it 90 days. So he keeps joking with me that we keep saying, okay, 90 more days and 90 more days. I said, well, what if we're not speaking to each other in 90 days? Well, let's just give it a go and see what happens.
- [29:39]
Anna Martin
Do you guys eat dinner together most nights?
- [29:42]
Claire Corey
Yeah.
- [29:42]
Anna Martin
Is he cooking for you? Because.
- [29:44]
Claire Corey
Yeah. And I'm kind of ashamed to say that I've never cooked for him once, but, no, he's been cooking a lot.
- [29:53]
Anna Martin
What does Don make you?
- [29:54]
Claire Corey
Oh, I love his sloppy joes.
- [29:57]
Anna Martin
Yum.
- [29:58]
Claire Corey
And then kielbasa and sauerkraut. I can't help.
- [30:02]
Anna Martin
I'm coming over.
- [30:04]
Claire Corey
Yeah. So those are my two favorites that he makes. But. And then he makes me breakfast and peeling oranges for me and things like that. I can't explain it. I don't know how this happened. Right after we got back together in June, I already had an existing appointment to go to go to the mortuary and make my funeral arrangements.
- [30:44]
Anna Martin
Oh, my gosh.
- [30:45]
Claire Corey
And so we had barely gotten back together, and I said, well, I've got an appointment in the mortuary. Do you want to come with me?
- [30:53]
Anna Martin
Mortuary date?
- [30:54]
Claire Corey
Yeah. So pretty much our first, quote date was going to the mortuary.
- [30:59]
Anna Martin
Tell me that he also took you to, like, dinner or something. It wasn't just mortuary dates. Like, tell me that you also went to, like, a nice Italian restaurant.
- [31:06]
Claire Corey
Oh, yeah, well, we. You know, in fact, yes, we've had. But my sisters are like, only you. That's just the way that you would roll.
- [31:15]
Anna Martin
I mean, I'm thinking about how, you know, you. This was an appointment that you had on the books. Like, you had made this appointment when you were single and handling this stuff yourself. And the thing I really look up to is it's. You're kind of telling him, like, this is my life. I was already doing these things. You are welcome to come along for the ride, basically. And the thing that I find remarkable from his end is he's like, yeah, I'm there.
- [31:41]
Claire Corey
And that's one of the things that we had about six good weeks of things being relatively normal, and then it all crashed, and I got really sick with the flu. And then next thing, I was in the hospital and the cancers progressed and And I'm looking really bad on paper. And he was staying in the hospital with me and sleeping in a chair. And that bothered me. I'm like, no, I don't want you sleeping in a chair. But my sister came from out of town. And then I said to him, go home and sleep in your own bed for one night. Because by now, he'd been at the hospital with me for probably four or five nights. So he went home, and that was the day that the results of my brain MRI came back. And my sister, we were out walking in the garden at the hospital, and she said, your MRI came back. And I saw from the look on her face, and she said, yeah, you've got a lesion in your brain. And that was the last thing that I wanted to hear. I felt like I could deal with anything but brain metastasis. And I said, well, what does dawn say? Because I kind of figured she had told him already. And we were standing and looking out the window. I remember the elevator door opened, and there he was, like, he came back.
- [33:20]
Anna Martin
You did so much work in the sort of middle part of your life to move on from your desire to have a romantic partner, and now you have that. You have Don. You have a romantic partner. I just want to know, like, what does it feel like to. To open back up that possibility and to let it be fulfilled? What. What does that feel like?
- [33:45]
Claire Corey
Well, on the one hand, it's kind of scary because you're opening your heart again. But I also think that, you know, it's not worth it to walk around with a closed heart. It's. It's hard to overstate the importance of that feeling of safety and belonging that I think that we all look for and that I'd probably been looking for for so much of my life. And to find that it's a little bit of a, you know, like you're swirling around on a merry go round, going, what just happened here? It's hard to get your head around, too. My life is very different than it was eight months ago, a year ago. It's very different because it's a whole different way of. Than I've been used to living. And we're not living together, but we spend a heck of a lot of time together. And I honestly thought we had this joke that I would be smothered if he was around too much. And so he kept asking me, you know, do you need some alone time? Do you need some alone time? So much to my utter shock and surprise, I have found that I really. I'M okay with, you know, him being here, you know, or me being at his place or whatever. I gotta tell you, I'm a little surprised at how much I've enjoyed it. The other night I said, well, I just would have come home and forgotten to eat. And he's like, no, no, we have to make dinner.
- [35:19]
Anna Martin
I'm making you sloppy joes and you are eating them.
- [35:23]
Claire Corey
Yeah. But it's just been a real joy, I think, to share with somebody the ups and downs and just to share in life with somebody. It's way more fun than I actually thought.
- [35:39]
Anna Martin
You know, a big part of. For most couples, a big part of starting a relationship or being in the early stages of relationship, like you and Don are, is talking about the future.
- [35:54]
Claire Corey
Right.
- [35:54]
Anna Martin
And all the time that you're gonna spend with them. What about you and Don? Do you talk about the future?
- [36:04]
Claire Corey
You know, right now, I'm responding to treatment, and things are going well. That can change very quickly. I'm very aware of that. I hope it doesn't, but it could. And certainly he's not a young person, and his own health could change very quickly. The truth is that we don't know what kind of future we have, if any. And so I find that I'm not very troubled about who's taken out the trash kind of thing. It's not like we're building a relationship to last through decades, because we're not likely to have decades. And so really, it's about today.
- [36:41]
Anna Martin
Was there a recent moment where the two of you were together and you thought, like, oh, this is the magic. Like, this is what it is?
- [36:50]
Claire Corey
Yeah. Well, I'd say there's quite a lot of those moments, you know, and maybe they're not the ones that you'd expect, you know, but, you know, we've seen some beautiful sunsets together and watched the moon rise, which was just beautiful watching a full moon rise and that. And I think about, like, I want to have more time for more conversations and more time to do this. And it's nice to do, I guess, what I call sort of normal couples things together. Yeah. It's just a very new experience for me. Yeah.
- [37:28]
Anna Martin
I'm going to assume that when you were first diagnosed and you started thinking about your own death, that looked a certain way to you. And then you meet Don, and over the past few months, as things have grown and deepened as much as they have, that picture of your passing must look a little different. And I want to know, like, has it changed for you? And if so, how.
- [37:59]
Claire Corey
You Know, I consider myself realistically optimistic, and so I'm optimistic, and I will take every single treatment that they offer me. I will do everything. But I'm also realistic. And so I know that the day may come when there are no more treatments available, and that I will have to gracefully. I hope I can gracefully accept that at that time. And I've said, I hope the gods will be kind to me as I leave this world. I also feel that I don't want to let anybody down, my family in particular, and now Don, frankly, by dying, you know, And I feel like, oh, geez, I'm going to put them through a lot. And so I do talk to him about it, and he says, I'm in it with you, and I'll be there regardless. One of the things that I've said to myself since I was first diagnosed with cancer, literally the first week, well, there is millions of other women who have been faced with breast cancer, and if they got through it, I can do it, too. There's millions of other women who've had chemo. If they got through it, I can do it, too. There are surgeries, radiation. There are many women living with stage four metastatic breast cancer. If they're doing it, I can do it, too. And what's also true is that there are many, many women who have died from stage four metastatic breast cancer. And if they did it, well, I can do it, too. And I just hope that I can do it gracefully. And I hope that. Well, geez, I really hope that I won't disappoint anybody and let anybody down, because I really do want to keep living.
- [39:48]
Anna Martin
Claire, I do think it speaks to the kind of person you are, that when we're talking about your own mortality, the first thing that comes to mind for you is other people. It's the people that you love. And I just want to say I think Don is very lucky to count himself in that group of people who you love. You know, when you wrote in To Modern Love, it was actually before you.
- [40:17]
Don
And Don had reconnected.
- [40:20]
Anna Martin
And I think it might have a different feeling now that we know what happened after you wrote it. So I wonder if you could read it for us.
- [40:27]
Claire Corey
I will happily read it. Yeah. Yeah. Who knew what was coming after this? Finally finding the magic. Since childhood, I yearned for love. Once I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. He said we were missing the magic. And admittedly, he was right. A few men came and went. I'm now 59 with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don't have a partner, but I've fallen desperately in love with life. Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere. My cat on my lap. A cashier extending an unexpected smile. Sunlight skipping across a lake I use each day to soak up the world's splendor. Not yet, I whisper to the heavens. I love it here.
- [41:43]
Anna Martin
Ugh.
- [41:43]
Claire Corey
That.
- [41:44]
Anna Martin
That. There's such a new depth to it after our conversation. I mean, it's just remarkable. There's so much I understand, the context and the history and also the chapter that comes after it, which you did not know when this was published. It's just remarkable.
- [42:01]
Claire Corey
Yes.
- [42:02]
Anna Martin
Claire. Corey, thank you so much for this conversation. I'm. I'm really, really grateful.
- [42:07]
Claire Corey
Well, I am as well. It's a delight to speak with you.
- [42:20]
Don
This episode of Modern Love was produced by Amy Pearl and Davis Land.
- [42:24]
Anna Martin
It was edited by our executive producer.
- [42:27]
Don
Jen Poyant, production management by Christina Josa. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original Music by Pat McCusker, Dan Powell, Rowan Niemisto and Marion Lozano. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez with studio support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani, Nell Galogly, Jeffrey Miranda and Paula Schuman. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we've got the instructions in our Show Notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.