Muthafucking Cancer

My dad has cancer. He has it because he drank and smoke most of his life. I have a conspiracy theory about his time in the Vietnam War, but we'll save that for another post.

I don't see him often. We were never really that close, but 2 years ago I lost my favourite uncle to cancer. It happened so fast that two months after I found out, he was dead. A year later, my dad was diagnosed. I didn't want the same thing to happen. So I started visiting my dad more often. The first visits were at the hospital, so depressing because he was sliding downhill while they delayed his chemotherapy to wait for insurance to cover him. He refused to talk because he thought talking might mess up his voicebox and the tracheotomy would be permanent. I believe he nearly died, but they started him on chemo and I got to see him doing well right before I left for Europe. I saw him a few more times and then right before and right after Africa in July/August, I saw him. He was thin, shockingly so. His voice rasped because he still had his trach. But he was getting better he was less morbid and his sense of humour was returning. I saw him one more time where he convinced me to take him to the store to play the lottery and he bought me a peach soda like I was his little girl.

I saw him again last night and he'd aged 30 years in a month's time. He sounded the same, he walked the same, but he looked like his dad, my grandfather - he looked like they were brothers and not father and son. I don't know what my face looked like when I saw him, but for any of you who know me, you know the emotion was plainly on my face.

I don't know how to be, but the resolve to visit my dad has grown. Which will make my grandmother happy, although she doesn't understand that my dad like people (especially people visiting) even less than my husband. So we'll see how it goes. I think, for the sake of the only good conversation my dad and I ever had, I will be there during the election to see if we will watch history together or if we will once again be disappointed.

Death makes me feel small. I feel it waiting, watching the proceedings. Death doesn't smile with glee, it just bides its time. It knows that this is inevitable. In a macabre sense, I know that my dad is ready, has been since he stopped being so morbid. He's been enjoying life, getting out, doing things that, I think, he always wanted to do. Being responsible for something when he was always afraid to before. Taking the time to get to know his children as people and not as, well, as children. We don't visit as much as my uncle's children did and still do because we didn't have the same kind of relationship. While my uncle's children were abandoned by divorce, my dad abandoned us while he was still there. Not all of it was his fault, but he is reaping the repercussions of not having a close relationship with any of us.

But we're growing and I hope we get to learn new things before Death decides it's time to go.