Regret

When my father called, inconceivably just 14 months ago, and dropped the "Big C" bomb so nonchalantly, I was terrified. The possibility of my world without him flashed through my heart and rendered me emotionally paralyzed. But he was so certain that he would be in the 20% of people who survived the form he had. And when he was certain, about anything, he was hard to resist; politics, religion, justice or ethics, he had a way of debating his stance that left you without a leg to stand on and yet somehow happy to sit. So I relented under the onslaught of his consistently positive, no nonsense attitude, and after a pep talk from my husband, I tried hard to believe. On some level I even succeeded. I went around telling my friends and family that it was okay, because even if the worst happened, and of course there was no way it would, but if it did, I was blessed to have NO REGRETS about my dad. I told them that the nature of my relationship with my father was such, that if either of us died that day we would leave nothing unsaid between us. Can you even imagine the arrogance that takes!? To believe there was nothing left to say to one of your best friends, to your father?!

In fact, the regrets I have could fill a small home... and they do. I regret that I didn't drop everything and rush to his side and stay there until the end, whether 172 days or 20 years. I regret not thanking him for all he'd done for me, every time I spoke to him. I regret that I allowed him to convince me that my fear of the loss of him was ridiculous and unfounded. I regret that I was not there to hold his hand and talk to him through the long, boring hours of chemo and radiation. I regret that I didn't go to Disney World with he and his family. I regret that my boys didn't know him better. I regret that I took his presence in my life for granted for 38 1/2 years, believing that I had plenty of time to make up for the time we lost when I moved so far away. I regret that I didn't tell him more often how proud I was to be his daughter and blessed I was to be his friend. Oh, I regret. All of these things and so much more.

Above all I regret that I let the fear that he would see my fear and mistake it for faithlessness, quash my desire to call him every single day and tell him that I loved him. Just that, a simple "I love you" everyday.

Those who love those who are diagnosed are thrown into the second worst kind of emotional limbo. We must not say all the things we so desperately long to say to our beloveds, because to do so would lend credence to the possibility they will not survive, and our faith that their survival is not only possible but probable is essential to their fight and hence, their survival. And yet, we need to tell them, and they need to hear, that the loss of them would matter to us; that the prospect of a life without them is sad and lonely; that we would be changed by that loss because they are instrumental to us and most importantly, that they are loved by us.

It is a unique situation in which two completely opposite positions are both completely right. So regardless of the position taken, you are left holding a big, bulging bag of regret.

Sick and Tried

I know what you're thinking. "My goodness, will they just let any inarticulate, non-speller blog now? Is that what we've come to?" But no, I meant TRIED, not tired. I have been sick and I have been tried.

By sick, I mean SICK! Physically ill. The sickest I can remember being in years. The first time ever I've missed 6 days of work because of illness. That includes the birth of my children, no lie. Sick, sick, sick!

By tried, I mean my patience. Every day. By a mere boy, no less. A boy who is thoroughly, if naively, convinced he is a man. And at 13, he does unfortunately, look like a man and when his voice isn’t cracking, he even sounds like a man. And yet, he is so far from manhood he can't even see it through the swirling fog of hormonal angst, across the abyss-mal crevasse of adolescence, with its roiling river of molten anxiety raging far below, over and around the boulders of school, peer pressure and puberty; any one of which he might be painfully thrown against at any moment.

Now, his daddy and I are on the far side of the chasm, and we are supposed to be building the bridge this boy will strut across into the easy and carefree days of adulthood, (I don’t have the heart to tell him it only gets H-A-R-D-E-R!). But try as we might, we are clearly screwing it up magnificently. We are as blinded by the fog, abyss and smoking river of fear as he.

I know we are not the first parents and child to stand teetering on opposite sides of the canyon, shouting unintelligibly at each other. But we may as well be. Everyone who makes the journey has to build their own bridge. For a while, I thought the bridge my folks built, the one that carried me safely to adulthood, would still be passable. But alas, a troll has taken up residence there and we can’t answer his riddle. So each day we take our ineffectual tools and begin again to bang randomly on things in an attempt to create a conduit from where he is, to where we hope he will someday be. We do this while he yells loudly and quite confidently from the other side that he is already standing beside us.

Yes, my patience is well and truly TRIED!