Lili Myers, author, coach and hypnotherapist, has spoken to leading end of life charity, Marie Curie, about her husband Dave Myer’s terminal diagnosis and how she’s been dealing with her grief since his death in 2024.
Lili spoke about Dave on the charity’s podcast, On the Marie Curie Couch, with host Jason Davidson.
When asked about her husband, Lily says she could “talk for days about him”. Speaking about their twenty-year relationship, she said, “it was really amazing, exciting, always changing and always interesting”.
Talking about how Dave was diagnosed, Lili explained how “after COVID, he wasn’t feeling very well, and he kept saying, ‘There’s something not right, something not right’”. After a general checkup in January 2022, which showed nothing suspicious, Lili and Dave asked for a more in-depth investigation.
Lili said: “Towards the end of March, finally, the results came back and it was cancer. And it hit us like a brick. We had a holiday place in France, so we were driving to France, and this phone call came through and it was the doctor. We took those four days, five days, just the two of us, walking, sitting, being together, crying together, talking about this together, not believing that this was happening to us.”
“There’s an injustice when they get a diagnosis like that. He was just planning to slow down with work because he wanted us to enjoy more life together in the years to come, and yes, this is when we were hit with the diagnosis. And then what followed, it was very, very quick. We returned to the UK at the weekend. On Monday morning we were at the hospital and on Tuesday he started chemo.”
Discussing Dave’s diagnosis, Lili said, “the initial discussions that we had with the doctor didn’t give us much hope”. Doctors recommended the maximum dose of chemotherapy, with the aim that the tumour would shrink.
When Dave started treatment, Lili reflected on how she took on a caring role.
“You have to keep your wits about you. You have to keep the positivity. You have to be the caring one, the one who makes the appointments, the one who drives here and there, the one who holds hands, whilst inside, you’re crumbling.”
Lili spoke about how the illness affected Dave, saying: “He loved food. He loved cooking. He was the one who was cooking at home. All of a sudden, he couldn’t anymore. He couldn’t eat anymore. The treatment brought side effects that we never even thought. He couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste. That was painful for him at first.”
In his last few weeks, Lili described how they had nurses coming to their house so he could die at home. Describing his last few days, she said: “He was more in between worlds. But we were there with him, his best friend, kids, family. We were all there. And yes, he passed away in my arms, just the way I wanted him to.”
Lili also spoke about how the public reacted to Dave’s death and how she’s used her grief to help others since: “There were hundreds and hundreds of messages that people were sending me on different platforms. Messages of support. Many of them wanted to express their own grief because, don’t forget, Dave was a part of the living room for twenty years.
“I pushed aside my feelings and my necessity to tend to what I needed, and I started talking to people. I wasn’t a speaker before. Once he was gone, I had to find a voice. I’m better at writing than talking, so I started writing. Whatever I imparted with people, they resonated with it”.
On the Marie Curie Couch podcast is available to listen to on all podcast platforms. If you need support with anything relating to terminal illness, death or dying, call the Marie Curie Support Line on 0800 090 2309.