Deterioration of a Daddy's Girl...

I wanted to share a little something about my father. The following post is actually from September 1, 2011...Its been on my mind to re-read it lately...because of a comment made to me that women try to use men to replace their fathers...I wonder sometimes... (Pops passed two months after this post on 11/3/2011)

Watching your father die isn’t supposed to be easy. I know this, and understand it. I guess I took for granted that I was just going to get a tearful phone call from one of my sisters telling me that I needed to take off from work to come back to attend his funeral. In my imagination, it was going to be one of those--he just never woke up-- kind of endings.

One may find it overtly macabre that I had already experienced some rendition of my father’s death and replayed it in memory before. My father was 46 at my birth. All my life I have been coming to terms with the idea that my Daddy may not be walking me down the aisle or holding up my children at their Christening. Taking into account the average American male gains nearly 20 pounds following a divorce (of which my father has endured 2) and the family history of alcoholism, hypertension, diabetes, and maladaptive stress coping mechanisms, I envisioned that aforementioned phone call coming around my junior year in college. A lot can change in a short time as evidenced in the bit of self-honesty in which I no longer consider marriage to be one of the milestones needing to occur by 25, and I’m Muslim so--no Christening coming in any near foreseeable future. These are life facts that have been fairly easy with which to deal and flow. Those were personal ideals, which tend to change with the growth of the person in such a subtle way as to feel natural.

There are few things in this world so designed that completely shake the foundation of identity in people like me. Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma stands to be one of those things.

My Dad has always been the biggest, strongest, meanest MF-er in my world. Even in my earliest memories of childhood that one supreme fact afforded me great Peace of Mind. There was only one person from whom I needed to fear reproach, and as long as I stayed within his boundaries, I was protected from admonishment by others, in that quiet reverence of: My Daddy can beat up Your Daddy. This progressed into the pattern that, my dad was my only real opponent later in life…

The year 2007 came and went, and with it, my junior year in college, during which my father continued to not only survive, but flourish. As such, with every passing year that my father remained nearly frozen at age 48, minus the slight peppering of grey in his hair, I grew to forget his mortality. We have had the most tumultuous of relationships since I hit puberty, but I guess I just assumed we would have time to have that little Hallmark moment one day …when we would sit back and apologize for the hell we’d had for each other…and we’d both be healthy when that happened.

I am now tortured with wondering how, in the couple of days from the last time I emerged from my childhood bedroom before he left for the next appointment, he has lost more mass. I cannot bear to see my father eat because he can’t stomach more than a few bites when he does at least, eat. I am the most rebellious, hard-headed, and willful of his kids…the baby child that had the balls to say what was on my chest with no regards for the feelings of others…and am now running out of ways to hide my tears when he’s around. I search for any excuse to leave the house, but still can’t find the resolve to leave the area and go home.

Watching your father die isn’t supposed to be easy. I never thought it would be a progressive deterioration of the biggest, strongest, meanest being in my world…