Lainey Cauffman has worn a thin, silver ring on her right ring finger every day since she was 17, when she became a wife and a widow.
At that age, Cauffman experienced loss like never before, one that would follow her for the rest of her life.
As their junior year of high school came to a close, Cauffman proposed to her terminally-ill best friend, Kyle Bollar. A week later, they married on a sunny day in Newport Beach. Now a psychology sophomore at Cal Poly, Cauffman marks her third wedding anniversary without her wife.
“It was never about me,” Cauffman said. “It was never my wedding in a sense, it was all about just the light that she brought.”
Cauffman and Bollar became inseparable as they moved from volleyball teammates to classmates in a summer biology course after their freshman year of high school. Later, they solidified their connection in a close-knit friend group.
During high school, Bollar was distinctly social; An admired volleyball player by many, she held dreams of attending Stanford University, according to Victoria Burch, a close friend of Bollar and Cauffman.
After previously beating two cancer diagnoses during high school, Bollar received a third and final detection toward the end of their junior year.
“It came back and there’s nothing they can do,” Bollar told Cauffman during a phone call.
Bollar was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), a rare type of sarcoma in the wall of the digestive system, according to Cancer Research UK. A cancer seen more in adults, only 2% of all GIST occurs in children and young adults.
Kyle’s friends jokingly called her a “unicorn” due to her consistent rarities – having ginger hair and blue eyes, both recessive traits – and her battle with a rare cancer, according to Cauffman.
Since the phone call where Bollar broke the news, Cauffman’s perspective on life changed entirely. She started taking each day with “big strides” and spent nearly every day after school at Bollar’s house with other close friends, cherishing the little time they had left with her.
Graduating high school alongside friends, attending college, getting married and having children were among the milestones Bollar listed to Cauffman that she would never achieve.
“It’s so unfair, she deserves all these things,” Cauffman said.
However, there was one thing Bollar could beat cancer to: the opportunity to walk down the aisle.
Dining one night at a “Benihana style” restaurant, Bollar and her mother went to the bathroom,
leaving Cauffman fighting back tears and expressing her frustration towards the cancer taking over Bollar’s body and wishes to her own mother.
“My mom kind of was like, you can help with some of these things,” Cauffman said. “I was like, ‘I can’t make the cancer go away, what do you mean?’ Then I realized what she was saying.”
That thing was marriage – something Cauffman could help Bollar accomplish, even though they did not share a romantic relationship.
Cauffman turned a moment of uncertainty into a proposal celebrating life, friendship and a win against cancer.
“It felt like nothing was wrong,” Cauffman said.
Bollar dressed in a traditional white wedding gown; Cauffman wore a black pantsuit. The two married on April 10, 2021. The wedding was funded by Make-A-Wish, a nonprofit organization fulfilling the wishes of children with a critical illness. It was officiated by Cauffman’s godmother, Vedica Puri, who opened the ceremony with “I’ll Be There For You,” the theme song from the ‘90s sitcom “Friends.”
“Everybody at the wedding caught on to what she was doing and started singing it,” Cauffman said. “It’s just one of those moments that is so surreal.”
Rather than a typical romance-based wedding, Bollar and Cauffman were “uniting” in friendship, according to an Instagram video by Ning Wong Studios, which captured the preparation for the wedding day and the event.
“I hereby pronounce you best friends forever,” Puri said in the video where she officiated the newlyweds.
Ten days later, friends and family gathered at a reception with a theme meticulously chosen by Bollar.
“Our entire family was wearing weed socks,” Cauffman said.
Burch was one of their maids of honor during the wedding and delivered a speech at the reception.
“It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because it was basically like a eulogy, but while she was alive and looking at me,” Burch said.
A mother-daughter dance occurred between Bollar and her mother, “a rough but bittersweet moment” described by a reception attendee and another one of Bollar’s close friends throughout high school, Cal Poly psychology sophomore Kiana Hosseinzadeh.
“I know it was very hard for everyone to be there and picture what could have been kind of, but also I know this was so unbelievably important to Kyle,” Hosseinzadeh said.
Following the wedding, Cauffman embraced the marital experience with Bollar.
“We had a few really fun months of just joking about being each other’s wives,” Cauffman said. “I was one of the sisters now, I was married into the family. It just brought such a nice distraction, such a nice piece of just unconditional love.”
Bollar died on October 3, 2021, at the age of 18 – a milestone age she aspired to reach.
“She’s still such a guiding figure in my life,” Cauffman said. “And it sucks that I can’t tell her that, I want to be able to tell her that because she’s the best wife ever.”
