But instead, “We just learned your father has prostate cancer.”
I’ve learned a lot of things from my 19 years of education — from optic nerves to iambic pentameter to a brief biography of Susan B. Anthony. But I can tell you for certain that no one and nothing taught me how to handle this.
But as it turns out I didn’t really have to handle it. At least not at first.
For the first few months after this phone call I didn’t talk to anybody about my dad’s prostate cancer. There was nothing really to say. “My dad has cancer, but according to my mom it’s not a big deal, and he’s being treated, and he’ll be totally fine.” What was the point of that?
I mean evidently it wasn’t a big deal. It was such a non-big-deal that my dad didn’t even know that I knew at first. My mom had informed my older brother and me without my dad’s permission, neglecting his declaration of “okay-ness” and his age-old line: “I don’t want them to worry for no reason.”
This was a classic My Dad thing — not wanting his kids to worry about him. Wanting to be tough for our sake. This selfless fighter spirit is what makes my dad incredible. But it took until his prostate cancer really hit for me to truly see that.
A few weeks after the news, my dad finally confessed his cancer to my brother and me over dinner. (“But don’t sweat it really. You kids have more important things to worry about.
And you know me — I’ll be back on the squash court within three days.”) He told me he’d be in Hopkins for the surgery (“... and hey let’s go out to brunch the Saturday after! And then all head home together for the holidays!”). A few weeks later I got a call. I was in Brody.
“Hello?”
“Lil?”
It was my mom who had been texting me that morning with updates on how dad was doing. But this time there were no emojis in her voice and no promises of brunch. She sounded wrecked.
“Would you mind coming to the hospital? Please.”
Leaving my finals studying behind, I took an Uber to the Med Campus. My mind was spinning — before I left, two of my best friends who were studying with me had watched me tear up as I talked my mom through her anxiety over the phone. I hadn’t been ready for this.
When I walked into the hospital my mom hugged me longer than she ever had. That day I kept her company, listening to her recount the days leading up to the surgery as she and my dad explored Baltimore and sharing fond jokes about his insane ability to turn every random person into a friend (including every nurse apparently).
I didn’t see my dad that day because the nurses insisted he was being moved around too much from room to room and test to test. Somehow by the end I felt like I’d helped. I felt drained, scared and slightly like reality was banging me over the head with a screwdriver. But in a weird, bittersweet way, when my dad sent me a text, “Out of surgery. Doin okay,”
I felt okay too.
The Saturday after the surgery (also the first day of winter break) my mom picked me up at 8 a.m. and rushed me off to the hospital. It was the first day I saw my dad. He was groggy but smiling. “Hey,” he’d said. “Lilykins! You excited for break?”
It was a feat of human nature that he could be feeling 12 shades of awful but still have the humility to put the attention on his daughter instead of himself.
We talked about finals and sorority life and the plays I’d written, and for the first time I noticed how compassionate my dad really was. He’s trying to make me feel comfortable, I thought. Even now he’s trying to be a dad.
After that day though, things for my dad got worse — he’d come out of surgery weaker than the doctors expected and his hemoglobin was dangerously low. They made him stay an extra night hoping he’d perk up with food, but then on the second night he fainted while trying to walk to the bathroom. They made him stay four days longer than any of us had expected.
On the second day my mom had to drive home to Delaware for clients who she’d already rescheduled. So I stayed alone, took the extra bedroom at my aunt and uncle’s house in Baltimore and visited my dad every morning until he was ready to leave.
I’m not going to lie, this was one of strangest experiences of my life. I drove to the hospital, greeted the nurses at the visitor’s center, walked into my dad’s room in the cancer wing and didn’t feel like a kid anymore.
But then... then my dad saw me, his face lit up like a Christmas tree and he offered me a chair. He’d tell me an anecdote about the nurse who looked like my best friend from high school or share an article about Shonda Rhimes that had made him think of me and I felt — gosh. I felt like I was cared for like a kid, in the very best way.
I didn’t really know what I was trying to say with this article or why I wanted to write it in the first place and share a piece of my life that was so vulnerable and so terrifying. But I needed to write it because of how much this all meant to me, how much it opened my eyes to something I took so much for granted before.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: It’s funny how you can live your whole life with someone and never truly see them for who they are and all that they do.
But then suddenly, you do.
