Hospitals

Over that period of seven years, I spent a good amount of time in hospitals visiting my dad. But these were the worst times, representing how poorly the battle against cancer was going. When I was younger, there wasn’t much I could do. Some people hate hospitals: the sickness, the unfriendly cleanliness, the death. For me, it meant watching lots of TV in the waiting room. I knew things were bad, but mostly because of what my mom told me in secret. I remember the pastors visiting, making small talk with me and then disappearing into my dad’s room while my brother and I waited outside with my grandparents or other family members, watching TV and doing homework. My mom would always stay in the hospital with Dad, while my brother and I went home at nights. It was an experience we shared with no one but our family members. I wonder what would have changed if my teachers and classmates had known.

It’s weird, but I only remember the visits toward the beginning and the end during my dad’s fight with cancer. In sixth grade, when things weren’t looking well, my mom told my brother and I to sneak our new miniature dachshund into the hospital, most certainly breaking multiple health codes. It must have been so uncomfortable for Lady as she was confined to my brother’s backpack. But Dad had just bought her for the family, and he was delighted as she pranced around on his hospital bed. We all tensed up when his doctor walked in the room and caught sight of our little dog.

“Well who’s this?” he playfully asked. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

But he smiled, petting our dog, and kept the news to himself, away from any hawkish nurses.

And of course I can recall, at the end, my last trip to visit Dad. That summer, in 2004, his energy finally evaporated. He was constantly confined to the recliner in our living room. He took off days at a time from work, and with him gone, the company slowly floundered away to nothingness. I worked for one of his best friends at a warehouse, and I remember when Dad picked me up one day, I asked him if he wanted to talk to his friend, Richard. There isn’t a person I know who he enjoys talking to more.

“No,” he responded. “I don’t have the energy.”

Some days, he would take me out for lunch and I waited for him as he painfully took step by step to the front door of the restaurant. Even with handicap parking, it was an agonizing walk for him. His breathing, at this point, had descended into harsh, rasping breaths. The cancer had spread by now—his lungs, I was told, couldn’t stop filling up with fluid. I thought he’d get better, like he always did. But I was naïve. My mom said he knew his time was quickly ending. One thing she noticed was he clutched Lady and our new dog, Tramp, longer than he used to, as if to say goodbye forever.

When he left our house in July, he never returned. We spent the next month and a half at Richardson Regional, the hospital where it all started. I spent so much time there, that I hardly missed any of the Athens Olympics on TV. My mom joked that she never wanted to hear that theme song ever again. I asked her earlier this year if she saw any of the events in Beijing. Mom said she’d avoided watching it at all.

At this point, my dad was on a ventilator after a tracheotomy. He was constantly drugged because of the pain spreading throughout his body, and because of his state, he was tied to the bed for fear he might remove the tubes from his nose and throat. My mom said this was it, and I accepted it. It seemed like the end had finally come. We’d been given seven extra years, but no more than that. I should tell my dad everything he meant to me, she said, because he could go any day.

So there I stood, at the end of his bed, just him and me as everyone had left the room. We stared in silence, and then I started apologizing. I was sorry I’d been selfish and been a bad son to him. I wanted to take back all those times I had been more concerned with myself, instead of him. I told him how much I appreciated him, how blessed I was to be his son. I wasn’t sure if he was in a place to hear what I’d told him. But he caught my eye, and his mouth formed the words.

“I love you.”

Tears in my eyes, I held his hand for a few minutes and said good night. His mind slowly slipped away the next few weeks. They moved him to a hospice, where he later died on September 7th.

Seven

The number of years at St. Mark’s. The number of years with cancer in it. Their close link marked the struggle, the self-dislike I grew so accustomed to during those years. But did the cancer really start just that year? Who knows how long the tumor was growing in his large intestine? Maybe years—Dad was never one to be exactly on top of his health. But for all that negligence, here was a man you would call a miracle baby. He had already been a cancer survivor as a baby. I found out when I was maybe six or seven when I found out my grandparents had bought four graves for their family, even though along with Grandma, Papa, and Dad, there were only three of them.

“Why four graves, Grandma?” I asked then.

“We didn’t think your father would live that long.”

Indeed, barely six months old, he’d already had one of his kidneys removed. And later on, I found out he’d been a diabetic since the 80’s.

So when doctors told my grandparents in 1951 that their son would soon die, they bought four graves in anticipation for the second child they would have had. They knew they were going to bury their first one at the least.

But he survived. And in 1998, when doctors again said he had but months to live, he managed to live on another seven years, even without those 19 inches removed from his colon.

After spending a few days away at a church camp in eighth grade, my parents picked me up. My dad was in the passenger seat. He was hairless. Gone was the hair and mustache he’d sported ever since I knew him. It shook me and silenced me in a way that I haven’t known since. The minute I got home, I ran upstairs and watched TV while they ordered pizza. I didn’t know what to do nor did I know what to say to him. And he said nothing to me either. We never spoke once of his cancer. Everything I know about his disease, I’ve learned through my mom. My parents wanted the disease to affect me as little as possible, so the less I knew, the better. My dad maintained the silence, hoping to spare me the sad details. But my mom would always want to tell me the truth. So that year, when he went through the first bout of chemotherapy, I learned again that he was going to die.

Did I resent him, then, for the anguish he represented in my life?

Yes.

Later that December, he wanted to see the movie Cast Away. For us, movies had been a source of bonding for us: a quiet pair who enjoyed a good story. We’d reveled in Gladiator and The Patriot, both of which had come out earlier that year. I had already seen it, and told my mom I didn’t want to go. She kept asking me to go since my dad was in the car waiting, until I finally declared it was not going to happen.

“Nathan, this could be the last movie you see with your father.”

Anger filled me up. I was angry that she would stoop so low to make me go watch the movie with him. I was angry that I had to be stuck with such a terrible disease. And I was angry that I knew deep down I was being selfish.

My parents left for the movie while I tried to distract myself at home.