Photo: bandita

Ed. note: The following was written by my friend and colleague, Joshua Johnson, aka Joshywashington, about his own experience with his father’s cancer. An extremely moving recount of seeing his father after emergency surgery, this was written many years ago, but just recently posted by Josh on his blog. I want to thank him for both sharing his story with the world, and letting me use it here to exemplify not only the fear, pain, and loneliness of a disease that will strike many families, but also the love, healing, and connection that can take place in the midst of a traumatic act of life.

While dredging the files of abandoned thumb drives, I chanced upon 1,000 words written by a younger Josh in the days after my father’s passing. What I submit to you now has been edited for spelling only. It is not the best writing, it is the stream of consciousness of a grief stricken son. I read it with the fascination of a voyeur.

Seven years is not a lifetime, but it seems that way sometimes, doesn’t it?

PART 1

Photo: Unhindered by Talent

“Your dad might look a little scary.”

Scary? What is this, Halloween? What Steve means is that they just cut a big nasty hole into his scalp, sawed open his skull and chopped up his brain like a slab of sirloin, and he’s gonna look the part. The part of a man taken apart and put back together. Humpty-fucking-Dumpty.

I wonder if I will be able to tell now? Will I see the cancer under his skin or smell it rotting on his breath?

“I just wanted to warn you. Try to act as happy and as normal as possible. It’s very important… and keep the visit short. He needs to rest.”

Two days ago the sun fell through the window like a promise of summer. Dad and I leaned against the kitchen table and joked and crunched tuna melts.

That was happy. That was normal.

Yesterday was waiting, and phone calls and family coming to wait and hug and ‘when can we see him?’. It seems like a year ago. This is when time begins to fade and awareness of hours and days and weeks blinks lazily or disappears all together. Just moments. Instances in this crisis that can’t be quantified by Gregorian timetables. On and on part of one big nightmare.

Normal. Happy. Scary.

He may look scary. Will his mouth be slack and trickling drool? Will half his face be reinvented? Will he still be my Dad?

Steve is lookin’ us in the eyes, he is real good at that, this guy’s head is screwed on tight. If he could look me in the eyes, then I had one foot on solid ground. It helped that he looked like his younger brother, my Dad. Dustin just stands there and nods. We are in a little waiting room. Soft lights, fake plants, women’s magazines and jars of potpourri that had gone completely sterile like 5 years ago.

Hey guys, change the fucking cinnamon sticks while your at it.

PART 2

We step out of the peaceful tones of the waiting room. The nurses station is a white murmur of softly ringing phones and soft voices answering. Steve walks us down the tiles, also white and most of the patients’ doors are ajar and everyone is passed out and chopped up. I don’t want to look. The nurses speak of insipidly normal things.

Photo: Unhindered by Talent

“Yes, and it went potty all over my carpet. We just had it put in seven months ago, you know?!”

I wish they had some respect for a couple guys trying to be normal and happy seeing their father for the first terrifying time after his emergency brain surgery. The circular corridor was filled with drug addled death dodgers.

How does it feel to be apart of my bad dream, ladies, to be the background chatter in my nightmare? A hundred little devises beep politely and always a shoe whispers on the polished tile and papers ruffle like settling wings.

Suddenly the last thing in the universe that I wanted to do was walk through that door and see my (scary) father. ‘He needs to see you,’ something small creaked deep within me. He needs to see you. I had never thought that it might comfort him, the object of this ordeal.

Then it all came crashing down on me. I had not considered his position fully, it was all “my father” and “my life”, but as we walked through the door and saw his gray eyes, I thought of Randy, the man, and all he had endured these last 48 hours. What pain, what sadness, what fear and confusion, and what seeing his sons might mean. These thoughts ran through my head like a arrow of hot lead. We all need to see each other.

He wasn’t sleeping like I imagined. He was awake. His eyes seemed too open, if you can understand that. They were wide and round and lolled from side to side as my brother and I flanked the bed. He smiled crookedly. We bent down and hugged him as best we could.

Just put my face on his chest, just hold it there, and under the sick and sterile smell of the smock there he was, battered but not broken, my father. Fuck. His hand feels heavy and immobile.

“How ya doin’ pop?”

Only stupid questions come out because I can’t say “please don’t die, please don’t have cancer.”

“Oh, not so bad. I think it’s gonna leave a scar though.”

His words are crawling things lurching from his mouth but there is that sarcastic joviality that puts the devil in his eyes for a moment. He is there, or he is trying to be.

“I love you boys.”

Slowly, said slowly and more genuine than I had ever known. He is smiling. Maybe they told him to be happy and normal too. I love you too. I say it and the fucking Universe pours out, everything, no exceptions; I love you too. That is it, baby, the Earth we straddle. It smashes through everything and absolves us of everything. I, we exist in “I love you”. That’s all we really want to say. But he says, slowly, through a low gurgle in his throat:

“I’m sorry.”

Photo: iProzac

His hair is greasy and matted, hanging in tussled oily clumps. The left side of his head is shaved, something he hates, and a huge arching frown is cut into his scalp. He is sewn together and the stitches dimple the blood-crusted skin.

“Pretty ugly huh?” he laughs. “I wish they woulda shaved my whole head though.”

Oh, the thousand little embarrassments of cancer. There is no glamour in it. It takes decencies one by one by one. Until you can only laugh or cry, naked in the dark.

It looks like no cut or injury I’ve ever seen. The word trauma comes to mind. A door was made in the left side of his head, just above the ear. Like a storm cellar, all the way the core. Don’t stare. When he turns toward Dustin or blinks slowly, my eyes hurry there, unable to help myself.

Happy.

Iodine was unceremoniously smeared over the Healing head wound and had dried in brown dribbles down his temple and neck.

Normal.

Here is the third installment of A Memory of Cancer.

Interested in possible alternative therapies for cancer? A good place to begin is the NIH’s Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) page on cancer. The Cancer Cure Foundation also provides a detailed list of therapies at their site.