My Dad Had Cancer

When you’re 15 years old and your parents sit you down at the dinner table and softly say, “Honey, we need to talk,” then that can only mean three things. Either,

A) They’re getting a divorce.

B) One of them got a new job so you’re going to be forced to move half way across the country, or

C) Any other horrible, life-shattering event you can possibly think of.

My parents’ “Honey, we need to talk,” fell under Category C. In my case, C stood for Cancer.

I had always believed that my family was pulled straight out of a sitcom, with the automated, pre-recorded background laughter and all. We are the white, middle-class, small town, average people that everyone can relate to at 8 PM after a long day’s work while sitting on the same living room couches they have had for 15 years. My mom and dad are basically Frankie and Mike Heck from The Middle. In my eyes, this is who my family always was: just like everyone else’s family. I grew up thinking that the day-to-day routine of my parents was their entire life, until we realized that life itself has nothing promised, and there are more hours in a day than just nine-to-five. By teaching me to make every single day its own spectacular chapter in a book full of adventures, both high and low, my family molded me into a person who keeps writing their story, even when it seems as if the ending won’t be happily ever after.

My father, for the last 25 years, has owned a barbershop in our hometown and cuts hair for a living. My mother works as a fourth-grade teacher at the local elementary school and has done so since she was in her early 20s. There has never been any instability in my life, as I grew up in a home with loving, married parents that worked hard so I never had to worry what I was going to eat for dinner or where I was going to lay my head that night. The ever so present stability, though, made me question why my life was not, what I deemed as a 12-year-old, “exciting.” Why did we always live in the exact same house, on the exact same street? Why did we go to the exact same restaurant every single Thursday night and order the exact same thing? Would anything ever change, or was this small-town, predictable lifestyle all I would ever know?

By the time I was 15 years old, I did know a few more things. I knew I liked going out on the weekends and hanging out with boys (sorry Dad). I was an average teenage girl – so when I found out that my dad had cancer, I reacted like a normal teenage girl.

I was angry, I was confused, and I was more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before, and I told God that this was not what I meant when I had said that I wanted a more exciting, unpredictable life. I expected our world to be turned upside down by surgeries, doctors’ appointments, and the usual uncertainties that cancer brings in its suitcase when it moves in with a family.

My parents, though, did everything but act angry and confused. They did not act scared. Not only did they continue to live their normal lives, but they made their normal lives into so much more than they were before. Days were no longer a nine-to-five routine, but a twenty-four-hour celebration of the time they had. I was drowning in my own tears, while my family was staring at this tsunami in front of us, refusing to become its victim.

Through the course of my dad’s cancer treatments, I witnessed my mother grow in her faith, work even harder at her job than normal so she could take some time off for my dad, and make the most selfless decisions possible. There were many times my parents would have to go out of town for appointments or a surgery, meaning my older sister and I would be home alone. Somehow though, it was like my mother managed to be in two places at once – taking care of us at home and taking care of my dad at the hospital.

Throughout the hardest months of his life, my father never failed to amaze me. He began doing everything that he loved but had previously thought he did not have time for. Playing guitar, big game hunting, refereeing high school football, farming Christmas trees, leading worship at our church – suddenly, my dad who I had always viewed as just an average guy, became the most diversely talented, lively person I knew. No stranger would have ever guessed that just months ago he had been told that he had a life-threatening disease.

When I most expected them to break, show weakness, and give up, my parents became the best versions of themselves. They taught me to quit looking at the days ahead of me as just appointments and to-do lists on a calendar. They gave me a pure, live example of what it means to turn adversity into opportunity. My dad had cancer, but I had a dad that cancer could not bring down.