My dad is dying. He is dying and there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard we love him, no matter how tightly my sisters and I circle the wagons around he and my mom, we cannot prevent this tragedy.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about death the last few decades. Right out of undergrad, I worked in cardiac rehab and quickly learned that death is random, unpredictable, and sometimes harsh. I lost patients I expected to recover, and graduated patients I didn’t think would make it a month. Then a number of years later my husband nearly died in a skydiving accident. Sitting next to his bedside willing him to live is probably the only time my mind has focused itself on one task. My brain is a non-stop, constant chatter of voices, but for those days in the SICU they were all focused on one thing. I was reminded of what I knew…that death was random, unpredictable, and sometimes harsh. I could only hope it spared us. For reasons I’ll never understand but be eternally grateful for, it did.
When my dad was diagnosed in August of 2015, no one would speculate as to how much time we might have, but we knew it wasn’t a lot. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a ruthless, relentless asshole that spares no one. But a few months turned into a few years and we made the most of it. With three more Christmases, three more trips to Cape San Blas, the arrival of Erin’s kiddos, we treasured our time together. We didn’t talk about the realities of his illness much, but we felt it’s shadow. It was a good exercise in being present, in enjoying today without knowing what tomorrow might bring. In December 2017 he spent four days in the hospital with sepsis. I’m still not sure how he survived it. My dad’s quietly fierce desire to stay with us has been incredible to witness.
But now the shadow has grown long. The inevitable march of his disease has picked up the pace. We still don’t know how much time is left, but the window is most definitely closing. For three-and-a-half years, I’ve known there wouldn’t be enough time. He could live to be 90 and it wouldn’t be enough time. But as I think back to all of the runs we went on before his back got bad some years ago, the vacations my family has shared, the lunches we’ve had both when we worked in the same town and more recently since he’s been sick, I realize that I have nothing but gratitude. My parents were dealt an incredibly shitty hand. None of this will ever be ok. But no tumor can take away what my family has created together. That will live on in us.
The lesson here is to love your favorite people hard. Love them hard, hold them close, do life together. Be close enough (literally or figuratively) to annoy the shit out of one another. Cherish every day you have, because there will never be enough days. We only get one go at this. Don’t waste a minute of it.
