This is one of those columns I’ve avoided writing for a few weeks now, I needed time to digest the information before I was ready to tell anyone about it. I’m still not ready – how can you ever be? – but Father’s Day is the natural time to talk about the fact that the person I admire most in the world, my father, is dying.
In the metaphysical sense we’re all dying, of course, and the older anyone is the faster that prospect is approaching. Still, the reality of it versus the knowledge of it in the back of your head is stark. Humans, as far as we know, are the only species on the planet with the knowledge of our own mortality. And it sucks. (If this seems rambling it’s because it is difficult for me to address, to formulate linear thoughts on. Sorry about that.)
A couple of years ago, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. It was caught very early, he’d had pneumonia and chest x-ray showed spots. A biopsy showed cancer. This is where it gets complicated.
My grandmother, my father’s mom, suffered from bone cancer for 12 years after being told she’d maybe live 2. My grandma fought through all of it. Chemotherapy in the 1970s and 80s is not the chemotherapy of today, it was much stronger and less targeted. The side effects were horrible, grandma was always sick. Now it’s still possible, but significantly less so.
But that memory of my grandma suffering is my father’s frame of reference, so he’s ruled out chemo. He’s also ruled out surgery.
When initially diagnosed he did have radiation treatments which held everything at bay for a couple of years. Now it’s back and worse. Both large and small cell. What does that mean? It’s not good. But doctors won’t give any prediction on the only question anyone has when you get news like this: how long. They say it could be 6 months or 10 years, no one knows.
That is profoundly unhelpful.
I’ve been trying to change my dad’s mind, but he’s dug in. I don’t know for sure that my grandma’s experience is what’s shaping his choice any more than losing my mom a few years ago, after 57 years of marriage, is playing a role. All I know is I don’t want to lose my dad, at least not without a fight.
But my dad has been fighting his whole life. It’s one of the things I admire about him so much. His life is an amazing American story. Maybe it’s a sad commentary on how far we’ve fallen as a society, but my parents were married since they were teenagers, had 5 kids who all love them and each other. You hear stories of families that have falling outs for whatever reason, siblings who don’t get along, but that’s not us. Same is true with the grandkids.
My mother’s father, who died when I was too young to have a real memory of him, was a real piece of work. He hated my father because he wasn’t Catholic. Grandpa, a “devout Catholic,” impregnated a girl before he married my grandma. Being “devout,” he refused any responsibility – we only met her after my grandma on my mom’s side died.
Anyway, my grandpa hated my dad, only ever really saying to him, “Still working?” He’d told everyone their marriage wouldn’t last because my dad was Lutheran. Ironically, the marriages of every single other one of his kids (4 of them) ended in divorce, whereas my parents remained married and in love for their whole lives. As the parents of friends split up throughout my schooling, mine stayed together. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but it happened.
Like I said, rambling.
That fight in my dad makes his desire not to fight now so confusing.
He’ll turn 82 in a couple of months and hasn’t had any cartilage in his knees for a long time. Every step is painful. Arthritis in his hip, knees and shoulders make walking and sleeping tough. He had one hip replaced about 7 years ago and it got infected, needing to be replaced after a dangerous stint in the hospital. He’s not a fan of surgery, as you might imagine.
Maybe that’s why he won’t entertain it now? I don’t know.
It’s hard to talk with him about it because all I want to do is tell him to fight and he doesn’t want to be harassed about it. It’s just difficult to not talk about. This is the man who showed me how to be a man. He and my mom instilled in me a moral code and a work ethic that has served me well my whole life. Everything I am I owe to them, and the man I am I owe to him. I’m not ready to lose him.
I’ll never be ready. No one can ever be ready to lose someone they love.
To my mind, there is something about knowing you’ve thrown every punch, but maybe there’s something more about going out on your own terms? I honestly don’t know. I just know I love my dad and I don’t want him to die. It’s a futile want, but I’d rather death be forced to take him.
Maybe I’m being selfish. It’s possible, even probable. I just look up to my dad and I love him so much. I’m glad, and in many ways lucky, I’m able to tell him this and these things while he’s still alive. I just want more years to be able to keep telling him those things. That being said, maybe going out on his own terms is one more lesson on how to be a man and the bravest lesson of them all?
Still, I hope you change your mind, dad, but I’ll always love you either way.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter