In Loving Memory of
Natalie Nourian
1/12/1984 – 9/21/2022
I was with the same girl for more than a decade. Not a single day of my 20s was without her. We never “got” married, but we were married in the truest sense of the term. She died in my arms of cancer just after midnight the night before the first day of the 2022–23 academic year.
About a year into our relationship, she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. We learned eight years later that it was not in fact “breast cancer,” but cancer caused by a global TP53 mutation. She was going to die from cancer one way or another, and her children would have a 50% chance of inheriting the mutation; she was vindicated in her refusal to have children on the grounds that she did not want to risk passing on her condition.
For the last six years of her life, I was the only person other than her and her doctors who knew about her condition. She told me I gave her five more years of life than she would have had without me.
I loved her with everything I had, and I wish I could have given her more.
My sweet principessa—we’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when; but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.