My Rock

My Dad always called me “his rock”.  He died in 2009 of the awful disease we all know too well, cancer. Throughout his battle, I tried to live up to my name. I went to doctor appointments and sat in hospital waiting rooms and rode in ambulances and sat in ICU rooms waiting for the inevitable trying to maintain the label he had placed upon me when I was just a little girl. I was the one in the house who always had it together. I started doing my own laundry when I was eleven because I was convinced that my mom did not sort it correctly. “The Rock” always had it together, and never crumbled. When the news came that Dad had stage-four lung cancer, I knew I could not crumble. It was not in my job description. Instead, I poured myself into research and trying to find out the treatment options, the best doctors, the truths they weren’t telling us, and ultimately, just being there for the rest of my family while they crumbled. He fought. He endured a hard surgery removing a lobe of the lung followed by chemo and radiation. We were lucky to get almost a full year of remission. However, when the cancer returned, as they prepared us it would, it came back with a vengeance. It covered him. It was in his brain, the remainder of his lungs, his bones and a tumor just where his aorta met his heart. I’ll spare you the details, but the end was something no one should ever have to witness. But there I stood, “The Rock”, remaining hard. No crumbling for this girl, so I thought.  Losing Dad was the worst day of my life and I can remember every detail of that day.

As I think about how cancer has changed my family, and me and I think about all the families out there who have been affected by cancer in some way, aren’t we all survivors? No, Dad did not survive cancer, but I survived his cancer, and my mom did, and my sister did and my kids did. Sure, we didn’t have to endure the pain and agony that he went through as a patient, but there was a different and true pain and agony felt on my part having to watch one of the people that I loved the very most in the world have to experience such a terrible disease. And after the disease finally won the battle, I was left to experience the rest of the world and my life without him. I have had watch my children grow up without their grandfather; to watch my daughter who was so very close to him cry herself to sleep at night because she couldn’t understand why he had to die. There have been so many times that I have longed to hear his sound reason in the craziness of life. For all of these reasons I consider us SURVIVORS!!! I try to focus on how incredibly luck I was to have such a wonderful man to have for my Dad! I was lucky enough to get to experience most of my major life milestones with him. He was there for my high school graduation, he walked my down the aisle at my wedding, and he was there for the birth of both of my children. There are also so many of the small memories we created as a family that I will cherish forever. And, of course, I wish every day for just one more day, but I know one more day would never be enough. When I do work with Lili’s Legacy I do it in honor of my Dad. I know he is smiling down from heaven. I love you Dad!