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You ask me why.
I had been away at summer camp for 4 weeks. I was teary eyed leaving all of my camp mates. I didn’t want to go home. However sad I was at that point didn’t prepare me for the sadness that would follow for so many years after that day. I wonder now if I refer to my experience at summer camp as the best time of my life because it was the last time I wasn’t worried about anything. It was the last time I could look around and say, “This is life. This is fabulous. It’s going to be this wonderful forever.” But maybe it was just what we all felt at 13.
I don’t remember now how long after we got home from camp that they waited to tell us about the cancer. Today I want to say it was a matter of hours. But maybe it was days. Camp and cancer now go hand and hand and have seemed to meld into one monumental game changer. We sat shocked on the brown down comforter that wrapped us in sleep as children. I wonder if Ian, then 9, remembers it as vividly as I do, if at all. The sadness that I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking him is an entirely different sadness that I’m just not ready to talk about yet.
Mom said he’d go in for his first radiation treatment the next day. Dad said nothing. Mom said that everything was going to be fine. Dad said nothing. I wonder if he regrets that now, considering the years following that day he didn’t have the option to speak up, or speak at all.
When the radiation failed, the laryngectomy was our only option. As I write this now, I have a movie reel of hospital visits, ICU tears and moments of painful silence that flash through my head. As they become more distant, I become more afraid. As painful as it is to have spent a handful of the “best years of my life” not knowing whether or not my Dad was going to live, to forget them is to forget where I am, why I am, and who I am today.
Unfortunaetly, as weak as I portray myself now, I wasn’t the weakest at this point. We all have our ways of coping. Some chose methods that further added to the slideshow of painful memories and permanent moments. But I’m not one to wonder how it could have been. I only wish I had wanted to know less. I wish I had understood then that ignorance was bliss. And to know it all didn’t leave me with any more answers, but with more questions that would be left unanswered for quite possibly my whole life. I apologize this is all so hypothetical. But to know it all would be too much, for both you and me.
The stroke hit once we were all out of the grey. It always seems to happen that way. My pessimism is certainly not unwarranted. As much as we had been through previous to that day, this was the first moment that I found myself digging deep enough to search for the words I would say to my mother and brother once he was gone. I’m always searching. When they told us he would be okay, I had trouble believing it. It’s been 5 years and I’m still waiting for it to not be okay. My Dad can only be Superman for so long.
So I’m getting married now, and more than ever do I feel this heightened sense of fear. Not of marriage itself, not of the commitment, not of my future. But of his. To not have my father at my wedding would be the most devastating moment of my life. And if I had to add a photo to my slideshow of me walking down the aisle without my father, I’m not sure I’d take the chance of walking down it at all.
I’ve been asked and questioned before as to why the date we have chosen. Of course there are all of the factual answers I give people: It was the only date my dream venue had left. I’ve always dreamt of a fall wedding. We’re getting married outdoors. All true. But the answer the comes from my heart is this one…
I’m afraid my Daddy isn’t going to make it another year.
I would get married tomorrow for this reason and for the reason of course that I’ve known since the moment I spoke to Greg that this was forever. But I won’t wait for anyone or anything. This is my life, my family, and my future. If I’m without the a part of my family, I’m without a part of my future.
Most would say I’m being paranoid. But most haven’t had to grow up with this fear. Of course everyone is scared at one point or another about losing their parents. It will happen one day. But to have so many close calls I’ve learned that sometimes it’s okay to be a little selfish. Especially if it means I get to have this memory in a wedding dress.
