Cancer Makes Me Cry

I would never claim to be an expert on cancer. I know very little about it which bugs me a little because my dad has cancer. I should know more but I don't. I don't know how it works or why it grows so fast or the mortality rates or success rates. I'm not even sure of what type exactly my dad has. What I do know is cancer makes me cry. I know what its doing to my family. I see what its doing to my dad. I hear it through the floor when he's up all night being sick. I hear in the sobs of my mother whenever we are alone together. I know that it is a menacing, dark and scary thing. Just saying the word, cancer, makes people cringe. I don't know much about it but I know these things. I know that everyday it may be killing my dad just little more than it was the day before. I know that its a tricky and devious thing. You believe that its gone when very smart doctors and learned people are saying "remission" and you start to breath again and then out of no where you realize its back because you can just feel it. Cancer has a feeling to it. At least it does to me. The feeling of it permeates every corner of my house and I hate it. I hate it because it feels like its stolen something from our home. Our home was always so happy there was such Joy there. Lots of laughter, lots of hugs, lots of being close to one another, lots of smiles. So much of that feels lost. Some times our happiness now feels like its borrowed from another time, another existance, taken from people we used to know. When our family is together and we are having the good times we always have had and the laughter slows and we breath in, I look around and wonder if this is the last time. I wonder if this will be the last happy moment before the terrible cancer catches up to us, to him.

I went to my dad's oncology office today. I usually avoid that place as much as possible because the feel of it gets to me sometimes. It takes me awhile to shake off the ick feeling that I pick up there. But today my day wanted me to help him thank his doctor and his nurses for being so nice to him. I'm a massage therapist so I took my little massage chair and set up in one of the rooms and massaged the staff. I was happy to give some service to the people that are trying very hard to keep our dad with us, with me. On the drive over there I looked over at my dad and I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the things I haven't said yet, for all the memories he'll miss, because of all the love I have for him. I hate seeing what this cancer has done to him. I admire him so much for how well he's dealt with this cancer. He has always been a great man in my eyes and I am not sure if I would conduct myself as well as he if I were in the same situation. Not only have I seen that my dad is even more deserving of all my admiration but he is loved by so many people. More people than I thought one person could know and they love him. They weep for him. They hug him and they pray for him. They are just as honored to have met him as my family feels blessed to belong to him. My father is truly a great man. I hate that this is happening to him, to us.

There is so much that I want to tell my dad, but I'm afraid that if I tell him these things then I must be telling him goodbye. I'm not ready for goodbye but I don't want to let this oppurtunity pass I don' t want him going from this world to the next with out saying I'm sorry. I want to tell him I'm sorry for all the poor decisions that I made and for the things that I stole from him when I left home and left him out and when I was married without him. I want to say I'm sorry for making him ashamed of me when I became a "slut", for making him worry and pray over his lost and angry daughter. Sorry isn't a good enough word to describe the remorse and sorrow I feel over the past and the pain that I caused him and my mom. I want him to believe in me have faith in me and know that I will be okay. I remember now all the things he's taught me that he thought I forgot. That I am becoming the woman that he always wanted me to be. I want him to be proud of me. I love my father. I have always been his little girl. So much of who I am and who I want to be is wrapped up in his existence. I'm afraid that if he's not here I'll not be the same. I'm afraid of what it'll do to my mom and if it will destroy her if he's gone or change her into a woman she was never meant to be. I think it'll be hard for her to recover from that kind of loss. He is her whole world.

I don't know much about cancer.

But I know that cancer makes me cry.

Miss M