Processing the “Big C”
On Wednesday, I found out that my dad has cancer, and—although it’s far too early to begin speculating—I have been a mess ever since.
I would like to think that my dad and I have made up and settled our differences. Growing up on his farm (12 acres of mixed citrus and fruit) was difficult. I have many experiences from the Starvation Mountain Road property (yes, that’s a real street name…) that have been etched into my memory, most of which are bad. To list all of them here wouldn’t be helpful but, suffice to say, they primarily highlighted his deficiencies as a father.
With the years gone by, I have seen him oscillate along a spectrum of parental competency, generally improving. There was a time when my dad was so stingy with his money it would be like pulling teeth asking him to spring for the 75 cents to buy us donuts at the Vista farmers market. Flash forward to 2021, where my dad graciously helped with the down payment to help my wife and I purchase our first home. I can’t recall how many other times he has loosened his purse strings for me, to help us out of a financial jam. (Another that comes to mind was in July of 2019 when he helped replenish my daughter’s college fund after we were forced to buy a new car when our old one finally died.)
I bring up money specifically because my dad doesn’t have a lot of tools in his tool kit. He was raised in a household rife with conflict and dysfunction, the evidence for which I could see at every family reunion growing up. My own memories of my grandmother were ones where favor was granted, but always with a cost. Money was wielded with power. I once heard a story that my grandmother once spent an entire Sunday morning balancing her checkbook in search of a lost nickel (still only worth about 60 cents in the mid fifties). I can only imagine what it would have been like when she was younger and less tempered by the wisdom of age. Indeed, I saw her do this to her own children even while I was growing up in the nineties.
My dad grew up in an emotionally distant household, with an emotionally distant father. In the same way, I found my dad to be physically present but emotionally distant. And while I have tried to make peace with that reality, I have been stubborn in my own attempts to help him come out of that, encourage him to leave that feeling of isolation behind. Even being aware of this now, raising my own child, it is not without years of therapy that I have been able to improve and break the generational cycle that was thrust upon him. We are not merely the product of one life, but of dozens, and with each generation we choose to follow in the wisdom of 1 Peter 3:7
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you[a] of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
and Matthew 18:5-6
Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Or not.
I love my dad, and I want him to love me. While his lasting legacy in my life (surviving cancer or not) will no doubt be financial—given how much he as squirreled away over the years in self-imposed poverty—I would trade it all for him to ask me to coffee (even once) and ask me how I am doing.
I am ready though to help him through this process. To pray for him, to help him around the house, whatever I can do to be useful. Even if it means saying nothing and watching a movie on the couch with him.
