- My dad died of pancreatic cancer seven years ago.
- Every Father's Day, people text me saying they know the day must be hard, but it isn't.
When my dad died of pancreatic cancer, he was so skinny that his eyes wouldn't shut. He didn't have enough skin left. The chemotherapy had robbed him of it. It's an image that haunts me.
Inevitably, on Father's Day, I get texts from well-meaning friends that they're thinking of me. That they know this day must be hard.
It isn't.
I learned to play guitar because he played it too
When I was 11 years old, I decided I'd teach myself how to play guitar. My dad played. My childhood is littered with memories of him playing Bob Dylan songs at the kitchen table. It couldn't be that hard, could it?
So I did it. I learned to play by spending hours on my bedroom floor playing Taylor Swift songs terribly. My dad started recognizing the ones I played regularly. He'd request the angstiest ones and listen with rapt attention.
"Play your grandad the one about screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain," he said with a grin when his dad came into town.
My dad used to take me to Starbucks on Saturdays. I'd get the same thing almost every time: a skinny vanilla latte and a coffee cake for us to "split." I usually ate the whole thing by myself. He never said a word. As I got older, my Saturdays were spent sleeping in instead of going on coffee dates with my dad. He never begrudged me for it. I'd wake up to a skinny vanilla latte on my bedside table instead.
When I decided to go to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for college, my dad learned everything he could about it. He started watching the Cornhuskers regularly. He bought me a whole host of things in red for my dorm room, including a microwave.
Before I turned 21, he used to try and order me wine when we went out to dinner. If the waitress asked for my ID, he'd attempt to play it cool. "Did you remember your ID?" he'd ask me. "No? Oh, OK. Well, um, never mind, I guess."
I knew what his diagnosis meant
I sobbed hysterically on the phone with him when he told me his prognosis. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is a death sentence. He was given three months.
"I'm not dead yet," he said to me lightly, trying to make the most of our time.
I went to Vanderbilt with him for his treatment once. He decided the night before chemo that we'd cook a big steak dinner. We went to the grocery store and bought a few filet mignons and some vegetables.
Over red wine, we talked about school and work and nothing and everything as our meal sizzled on the grill. It was one of my last normal moments with him.
The day before he died, he asked to go outside. We put him in a wheelchair and brought him to the back porch.
He looked at our backyard–a small patch of green in the suburbs of Chicago–with childlike wonder. We all knew he was seeing it for the last time–that this was likely the last moment he'd be lucid.
It was.
My mom threw up when my dad died. We knew it was coming, but it was like her body finally gave out after months of caring for him and watching him become a shell of who he was. I held a washcloth to her forehead and helped her plan the funeral.
I miss him in the things we used to do together
I don't miss my dad on Father's Day.
I look at the pictures of people grilling out with their dads and grin. I watch my friends with their newborns and am filled with awe that they are parents. I sit with my husband as he calls his dad, and I tell my father-in-law I love him.
I don't feel the ache of missing my dad on Father's Day.
I feel it when I hear a particularly good Taylor Swift song that he never got to hear. I feel it when I order a skinny vanilla latte and a coffee cake at Starbucks — for old-time's sake. I feel it when I see a red microwave or when my wine-aficionado friend recommends a particularly good glass of red. I feel it when I cook a steak dinner from scratch and on any perfectly picturesque day.
But mostly, I feel it when I strum my guitar.