When my dad was first diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer, I spent the first couple of months researching the outcome. It wasn’t good. I accepted that he was dying but I couldn’t accept that I might not have a year with him. After each doctor appointment, where we continuously got bad news, I turned from being hopeful to being quietly realistic. On the outside, I tried being hopeful for my family’s sake, but the more I learned about the disease, it was evident that we didn’t have years.
I shifted my research and began studying what it would be like when my dad would start actively dying. Maybe that is a morbid way of looking at things, but I have always wanted to be prepared. In my head, the more I knew, the less it would hurt when the time came for the inevitable.
Throughout most all of Dad’s sickness, I hadn’t let myself cry much. There would be a night here and there that I would allow myself a couple of minutes to fall apart but then I would think “ok, that’s enough” and get up to wash my face. I rarely cried in front of anyone, even my husband, because sympathy and someone feeling the need to comfort me just turned my stomach. Basically, don’t touch me.
The week after we put him in the nursing home through hospice, he rapidly started declining. I stayed with Mom, my brother and his wife most of that week, and the night he died, I couldn’t sleep. I grabbed my laptop and started browsing through old photos that I keep on an external hard drive, so I don’t lose them, and came across my high school graduation video that I am so thankful my brother Casey recorded for me.
I fast forwarded to the part where my dad does his little speech and I watched it about 4-5 times, because we hadn’t been able to hear his voice since November; he lost it the night before he started radiation due to an enlarged, cancer-filled thyroid and couldn’t speak above a whisper after that. Suddenly, the tears that I had pushed down for so long came flooding and I could feel my heart literally breaking.
Not an hour after that, I heard my mom get up to go to the bathroom. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table to see that it was 4:57am. At the same moment I heard her flip off the light switch, her cell phone started to ring, and my heart dropped down to my stomach. This is it. This is the call my entire family has been dreading.
The days that followed were a blur; nothing felt real. I made it my goal to do everything I could for my mom and part of that meant keeping my feelings down, deep inside of me. I sat through visitation without a tear and remember clenching my jaw the entire funeral service. Still no tears came.
The next day came and went, and still no tears. I could feel myself angry; angry at God, angry at the circumstances, angry at everyone who asked me how I was doing – I wanted to tell them “how do you think I feel, I just lost my dad?” but I knew that was wrong. They meant well.
Distance was my best friend during the end months of my dad’s life and throughout the funeral process. My phone continuously buzzed from well-meaning friends, and I just didn’t have it in me to answer, or even read the texts at one point. As terrible as it sounds to put it on paper, what I wanted most of all, they couldn’t give me: my dad healthy and alive and full of the life he once had.
I slowly turned my anger into strength. I’ve used it to push me harder to be the person my dad would want me to be. He wouldn’t want me bitter or sitting around feeling sorry for myself. He raised me better than that and for me to do those things, is disrespectful to his memory.
I never considered myself an anxious person until I got well into adulthood. For most of my life I have been carefree, free-spirited, life of the party, not afraid to dance and be ridiculous, no worries, super confident and nothing really bothered me.
This journey changed me. I no longer felt like myself; I felt more insecure, more introverted, more anxious….less brave… I am slowly beginning to realize that was the enemy. If the enemy can’t mess with our circumstances, he’s going to mess with our thoughts about our circumstances. He may not mess up our situation, but he will mess up our perspective.
I am learning that God can turn any situation or thought around and make it good. He can take any mess and make it a miracle. I think sometimes we go through hard times or struggles so that we realize how much we need Him. We can’t (and shouldn’t) do this life alone.
So here’s to you, Dad. I know there will be tough days ahead, and moments where I just want to stick my head in the sand, but I know I have a purpose in this life just like you did. I am going to embrace the ones in my life that love me, build a legacy to leave my children like you did for us and lean on God through it all.
Until we see each other again,
Your Baby Girl
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