When I was around six-years old, I remember waking up and realizing my dad was going to die. I was inconsolable, sitting up in bed, crying for my dad. He sat with me, probably saying the same things most parents would; that he wasn’t going to die. If he did, it would be a very long time. That I would be old like my grandparents when he died.
It was 17 years later, when I was 23, when he died, so I suppose he was right that it would be a long time. When I received the call from my dad on my 22nd birthday, I thought it was just a birthday call. I was living four hours away in a different state, where I had lived with my first husband for three years. We had just bought our first house, a 2-bedroom, one bath older house, but it was ours and we were excited to start working on our fixer-upper. I can remember being on the phone, talking to my dad about the usual stuff; work, my husband’s classes, what we were doing on the house, when he told me he was sick with cancer. Lung cancer; small cell carcinoma, which meant little to me at the time. Sure, I knew cancer was bad, but it was my dad, and he was only 48 years old after all. It just didn’t sink in. In my mind, you get sick, you get treatment, you get better.
He fought it. Chemo, experimental treatments; even a trip to the Cancer Research Facility in Houston, but to no avail. 13 months after diagnosis, our dad was gone. I had just spoken to him the day before, having left the hospital in favor of being home with hospice. I didn’t even know what hospice was at the time.
The funeral was organized quickly, and the cremation was performed succinctly. Life went on for everyone, though I'm sure my Grandma and Grandpa J felt it most profoundly. Regardless, they worried about us and consoled us. They just lost their only child, and they consoled us. That's the kind of people they were.
Did you lose a parent at a young age? How did it affect the rest of your childhood/adulthood?
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