I know I’ve mentioned my dad before at least a couple times, because my dad is awesome and I talk about him whenever I can. Now I’m talking about him because I promised.
So, when I was a junior in high school, the year kinda sucked. Not for me in particular, just in a general way. Students were dying left, right, and center through heart trouble, car accidents, drowning, and suicide and parents kept passing away from cancer.
The day I went to my best friend’s mom’s memorial service (liver cancer, if I remember correctly) was the day my parents told me that my dad had cancer.
My dad, as you know, was the rock that kept my family steady and the glue that held us together. The idea of him being sick- that sick- was terrifying. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and we began treatment.
Our friends and family were fantastic. Two of Mama Kraken’s sisters came into down, cleaned the heck out of the living room (Dad slept on the couch because his and Mama Kraken’s waterbed was too hard on him), bought an air purifier, and commandeered our lives.
The neighbors and friends rallied around too, bringing meals and taking Dad to chemo sessions when no one in the family could, or just taking him out to lunch and talking. One day I woke up to the neighbors raking and weeding our lawn and gardens and scrubbing down the house- those kinds of people.
Eventually, after about two years, Dad was cancer-free. The speculation was that his work as a carpenter (before he became a stay-at-home) had brought him into contact with carcinogenic chemicals used to treat wood and that had caused his cancer. Whatever the cause, he had beaten it. We had a cookout in the cul-de-sac and the entire neighborhood turned out.
For a few months, life was great. Then we got news that his cancer had come back.
Well, technically no. His chemo had caused a new cancer to develop- Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Irony.
So we slogged into battle again. Cancer, whatever anyone may tell you, is a team effort. After a while, chemo becomes so draining that you can hardly do anything on your own. Mama Kraken began to call our every memory slip “chemo brain,” because even the family feel the effects.
I got off work at 11 one night (back during my days at Target) to see that I had missed a number of calls from my family. When I called Mama Kraken back, she said that Dad had gotten very ill very quickly and to come home immediately. I panicked and drove the half an hour to my apartment before making the 1.5 hour trip home.
That was a very quick two weeks. Dad never got better, and he never woke up.
