The Thing about Cancer

Week Eight

February 23, 2013

(I blurred out what dad wrote, not because of what he said, but because of its meaning.  It is something special to me and I want to keep it private.)

Yes, cancer sucks.
Yes, the idea of cancer is always lurking in the back of my mind.
Yes, cancer is hardest thing I’ve ever had to experience.

There is nothing good about cancer, but if I had to pick one thing it would be this:

There are moments in our lives that are significant.  I’m sure if you were asked to list those moments it would look something like this.  First day of school.  Learning to drive a car and getting your first license.  Graduating high school.  Going to college.  Graduating college.  Getting married.  Having a child.  (I haven’t experience those last two yet, but I’m sure they will be some pretty big days in my life.)  A vacation.  Doing something new or daring. Etc.  All these things that would be played on a highlight reel of your life.

But what about the little moments that gets you from one big event to the other?  The ordinary things that happen on a daily or almost daily basis?  Laughing at something silly that was on tv.  Remembering childhood stories.  Family outing to wash the cars.  Watching Abby jump for joy while chasing bubbles.  Making silly faces and laughing till you cry.  It’s these moments that often get pushed away or ignored.  But it’s also these moments that mean just as much as the big moments, if not more.

These moments that I am more aware of because we live with cancer.

During the week of my birthday I asked my parents to write a little something for me.  As usual, it took dad a while to come up with something.  He is not one that openly expresses feeling or emotion and in some ways I was asking him to do so.  It took him about two and a half weeks to come up with something and he gave me the card on the 23rd of February.  He handed me the card and then walked away (I didn’t realize it at the time.)  I read what he wrote and burst into tears.  I couldn’t talk and handed the card to mom so she could read what he wrote.  She began to cry and then she went to go see dad.  His chin was trembling and he asked, “Too much?”

No daddy, it was perfect.

I would like to say that this note would mean the world to me in any situation.  But because I know what we have been through and that our time is limited and because cancer is in our every day….this moment….this note means more than words could ever say.  So I will leave you this.

I am so glad that he is my daddy.
I am so glad for this moment.
I am so glad that I have his words, in this hand writing, saved forever.