This was not an instantaneous decision but rather a gradual progression based on nightmarish moments rife with anger, helplessness, soul-wrenching pain, and despair. My father had been sick for a while, and for months, he was in and out of the hospital. His condition kept getting worse, even as they tried to figure out what was wrong with him. Watching him go through it all, this man who was proud and loved his books – reading and talking about them – reduced to relying on others even for the most basic functions, unable to read or talk, that sucked, beyond sucked.
There were the moments that I sat with him during his hospitalizations, back when we didn’t know how bad it would get, and I would try to comfort him in the face of his bewilderment as his body slowly let him down. The lights would flicker next to patients’ beds as they rang for the nurses. And I remember watching the long hospital ward hallway and the flickering lights and thinking that it looked like a scene from a horror flick. I just didn’t know that pretty soon, our life would be just that. I did not know that we would helplessly watch as my dad’s body became his no more, his brain devoured by this greedy monster that did not care about the devastation that it would leave in its wake. There was that time when we were in the doctor’s office, my dad a few meters away in his HDU bed, and the doctor took us through my dad’s scans and handed down a death sentence. Another scene in my family’s continuing nightmare was the last time that my dad was home, watching him being carried down the stairs and into the car and the sense of foreboding that came over me; this was it. I was losing my dad.
For months, I was so damn angry. I was angry at my dad because I felt like he wasn’t fighting enough, angry at the doctors for not figuring out what was wrong with him and fixing it, angry at God because he didn’t come through for us, angry at my mum because her faith wasn’t enough, and angry at the world that went on when ours was ending. I was angry at myself for the wasted time, the missed lunches, the difficult conversations that we needed to have and would now never do. I was angry that my one-year-old nephew – and who as per Kikuyu tradition was named after my dad – would never get to hear his grandpa do that clicking sound thing that he used to do with me when I was young and that I found myself now doing with my nieces and nephews. I was angry that my dad would never get to see me sort my life out and be happy, that he wouldn’t be around when I met that special someone, for that awkward father-daughter dance or even when I had kids of my own. I hated that I would never get small future moments with my dad. Cancer fucking sucks.
Sitting at my dad’s bedside, watching him slowly fade away, singing “My Sunshine” to him and willing him to live, I would meet his eyes, trying to be strong for him and not cry. I would wonder what he was thinking about. Was he scared? Was he ready to let go? Did he have regrets? And if he did, what were they? Had he been able to talk, what would have been his last words to us? This experience was a wakeup call. All those tomorrows that I planned for and focused so much on at the expense of today, they were not guaranteed. Those things that I feared like failing, not being good enough, or being judged, they weren’t worth shit in the end. Watching my father die, I decided to live.
Knightlessjules 