The Aftermath of Denying Dad’s Last Request and His Harsh Final Words
Finding closure without forgiveness
It was a year after my father’s first lifesaving surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his brain that he started acting weird again. His anger, bad driving, and lack of self-perception that wound up being symptoms of a brain tumor the first time were all back again with a vengeance.
My dad’s motor skills went from bad to worse. He started falling down all the time at home. He’d scream obscenities at me like it was my fault while I walked over to pick him up off the floor. I never took it personally. It wasn’t him calling me useless, it was the tumor.
At 18 I was the only one in the family strong enough to pick dad up when he needed to get to the bathroom. If you didn’t watch him, he’d try to get up himself and wind up on the floor screaming for me. I spent all my weekends at home waiting on my dad. I didn’t mind. My dad and I were super close. We were more friends than father and son.
When he wasn’t in one of his moods, we would laugh about his deteriorating condition together and make morbid jokes. The sarcastic humor I’d learned from him was our love language.
The doctors confirmed his cancer was spreading and the part of his brain tumor they couldn’t remove was…
