The List

Number 38 (Anne)

Number 38. Write a letter to the people you miss.

My father died in March of 2009 of colon cancer. I was 21 at the time. We had a very... Complicated relationship. My father and I were not very close until I was about 17. He was an absent parent for most of my life. This isn't something that I can blame entirely on him, however. My poor mom tried to persuade me into wanting more of a relationship with him. She always went the extra mile and took me the 3 hours to see him. I just never longed for a relationship with him until I was older. Even then he made it difficult because he was very selfish until towards the end of his life. Some may even argue that he was selfish until the very end. But all I know is that I was constantly disappointed with the lack of effort he put into trying to see me.

I remember one visit when I was about 14. I had gone to West Virginia to visit my sister. She had arranged with my father for us to spend a day together. I remember talking to him on the phone before the 3 hour trip up to see him and he had suggested that we go bowling. I agreed, even though it wasn't really an activity I would have picked, being the angsty teenager that I was, but I agreed since I was really just happy about the prospect of spending some time with him. I spoke with him on the phone again after I had gotten to my sisters house and we confirmed our plans for the next day.

That next day I sat at my sisters house and waited for hours on end for him to show up. We called him, and called him, and called him. He never answered, never called back and he didn't show up the entire day or night. He did eventually come over to my sisters house the next day, with no excuse. It was just like nothing had ever happened. It was incidents such as this that drove me further from my father and his disappointment until I was well on my way to adulthood. The sadness and disappointment that I was always on the recieving end of in our relationship wiped away most of my desires, the few I had left, of a father-daughter relationship. I completely shut down and didn't try for about 3 years after that incident.

Sadly my father was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2005 or 2006 and I was robbed by the universe of the time that I so dearly needed in order to catch up with him. To bond with him. To make up for lost time. His diagnosis came about a year and a half after I began making an effort. I was 18. His prognosis in the beginning was very promising. They 'caught it early' and were 'able to remove all of it.' Along with a lot of his colon.

The doctors put a pump in his chest for his chemo and had nothing but confidence that this was but a minor and temporary set back in his long and healthy life.

After many months of chemo, I want to say 9 months but I could be wrong, the doctors informed my father that the pump in his chest had malfunctioned. They took the malfunctioning piece of shit out of his chest and replaced it with a shiny, brand-spankin' new chemical pumper. They also restarted his year of treatment. It was about a year and a half in when he finished his chemo treatments. They did the routine cancer screening after that and found that, not only had the cancer come back but it had come back in full force, metastasizing to his lymph nodes and spreading throughout his body. The doctors advised my father that they would need to do more surgery to remove some lymph nodes and anywhere else they could remove the cancer from and that he would need to restart chemo or possibly radiation.

When I got news of this, from my mother while I was at work, I literally hit the floor... I mean, I totally fell down sobbing in the office. I may not have known my father very well, but I knew that he was stubborn. If I knew anything about him, I knew his stubbornness, as this is a trait I strongly inherited from him. I knew before anyone could even confirm it to me; my father was not going to go through anymore treatments. He was not going to fight to kill the deadly masses growing inside of his body. He was not going to sacrifice 2 more years of his life, even at the prospect of recieving 10, 20, even 30 more years after that. He was not going to give me the that time I deserved... to get to know him as an adult, or in general really. He was going to be stubborn. He was going to be selfish. He was going to live his life for himself. Not for his 7 children. Not for his wife. Not for his 10 grandchildren. Not for his 3 brothers. Not for his only sister. Not for the grandchildren yet to be born. Not for my future child/ children.