Why I Never Wanted My Dad To Die

Three of us sat knee-to-knee in the doctor’s office. It was a small room, too small to discuss something as enormous as the black shadows on my father’s lungs. He’d had a wet cough for a year, maybe even longer, and we waited for the bad news. The doctor explained that the small dark spot from his first X-ray eight months earlier had blossomed and now covered most of his lungs. The new X-ray showed splotches everywhere, as if my father had taken a full paintbrush, the tool of his trade, and splattered it across the screen. <h2>We were facing a stage four lung cancer diagnosis.</h2> I say ‘we’ and not ‘he’ because my father and I were a team in preserving his well-being. I could not face a world of caring for my mother alone. As it was, I hadn’t spoken to her in two years. After enduring decades of her cruelty, I had washed my hands of an unrealistic hope of a healthy relationship with her. My dad had been her ally and enabler, staying at her side no matter what she dished out. I knew my father cared about me, but only as far as her needs would allow. But who forgets about a spot on their lung? Did he think it would just go away? Didn’t he care about himself? My eyes drilled into him. “Dad,” I said, “Why didn’t you follow up?” Shrugging his shoulders, he stared at the geometry of our knees. I was lost in a haze when the calamities of the past year floated before me. That forgotten X-ray had been the bellwether of a looming family disaster. <a href="https://medium.com/the-memoirist/why-i-never-wanted-my-dad-to-die-9078614745da">Visit Now</a>