A Tragedy in Three Parts

Picture this: it's October 2018. You're driving in the car with your boyfriend of five years to your family lake house after spending the night with him at his college. He looks over at you suddenly and says that you need to talk. Your heart sinks.

"I've been taking this class on relationships," he says. "It made me realize that I really want kids in the future, and I know you don't ever want kids." His breath is shaky and you can tell he is trying not to cry.

You process this information. He's not wrong. You don't want kids and you never have. But what do you do now?

"Well, neither one of us can get what we want and be happy, can we?" you ask. "So I guess we have to end things." You're confused, and trying not to cry, but that's not working.

He drops you off at your house drives away. You sit in your bed sobbing, thinking that this is the worst day of your life. This heartbreak is unbearable. Five years in a great relationship, gone just like that. Surely, nothing could be worse, right?

How wrong you were.

One week later, you're back at school. It's a Friday and you're getting ready to have a party with your golf team. You've been planning this for weeks and you're so excited for it. Suddenly, you get a phone call from your brother. Weird, he doesn't usually call you.

"Hey Dave, whats up?" you ask as you sit at your desk, room empty, both of your roommates out of town.

"It's Dad. He's in the hospital. He...he has cancer." The words hang heavy in the air. Your chest constricts, but you hold it together just for a moment.

"Ok, what do I do? I need to come home. Can you come get me?" You ask, trying to make sense of this.

"Steph is going to come get you. She'll be there in about an hour, so be ready. I love you," he says.

"Ok, yea I'll be ready. Love you too," you manage to reply.

As you hang up, your world starts to spin, your chest starts to constrict, and you can feel yourself starting to cry, and oh god you can't breath. But you need someone, anyone, right now. Your friend and teammate Megan lives next door to you. You pray that she is home as you walk to her dorm. Her roommate answer the door and you choke out "Is Megan here?"

She comes rushing to you and holds you as you cry into her shoulder. You sit on the floor of your room for a while as you tell her what happened. She's there for you and you love her for that. You message another friend, Salim, and ask him to come over. When he gets there, he doesn't ask what's wrong, even though he sees you packing and can tell you've been crying. He just talks to you, distracts you from everything that is happening. You're so grateful for him.

Steph arrives and you rush to the hospital. Your dad is there, laying in the bed. He's trying to be brave, but it's true. He has cancer and it's spreading. But he's going to start chemo, and he's going to get better. He has to. Right?

Fast forward to July. You went to Cyprus for an archaeological dig. You didn't want to leave because Dad is still sick. In fact, the day before you left he sat you down on the stairs and told you that his diagnoses was terminal. Turns out the first type of chemo they give you is the strongest, and if that doesn't work...well good luck. But he made you go, he wanted this for you, so you left for a month. You called as often as you could, and got updates on his health. One day your Mom told you that they got his most recent scans and it had spread to his brain. You threw up shortly after that.

Then one day, two days before the end of the trip, you're in the trenches digging, when the advisor yells for you and has a phone in his hand. You know what's happening and you run out of the trench. How you didn't trip on the ropes or damage anything you don't know. But you make it to that phone. Its your Uncle Jay on the line.

"Devon, you need to come home. Your Dad...he got pneumonia at the lake, and he's in the hospital. We all want you here," he explains.

"Yea, yea ok, I'll get home as soon as I can," you manage to say.

You give the phone back, and one of the other team members takes you aside and hugs you while you cry. You couldn't hold it in any longer and it just comes out. They take you home and let you rest and pack up your things. They find a flight out for you, it just happens to be at 4am, but that's ok. You just want to get to your Dad.

You finally make it home, and you get to the hospital to see your Dad. He's changed. Skinnier, paler. And he can't talk as much. But he talks to you, he remembers you. He didn't know you were coming, but he's so happy to see you. And he whispers his last words to you as you lay next to him in his bed, just like you used to when you were little.

He comes home the next day and in home Hospice is set up. It's a depressing thing, Hospice. We had to take care of him as he slipped away. We laid on the couch next to his bed, our whole family being as close to him as possible. Every cough made you panic, thinking that this was it, this was the last breath he would take. But he held out. We gave him his medicine, the Hospice women came to bathe him. And we cared for him.

You woke up early one morning to his labored breathing. You ran to his side, but he was ok. This had become normal for you, so you laid back down on the couch and drifted back to sleep. An hour, maybe two, went by and then your Mom woke you up. It happened he was gone. And you didn't know what to do.

How do you move on from that? How do you let him go? You don't know. Everything goes blank. The next few months are hazy, filled with "I'm so sorry" and panic attacks. But you push on, and you hope with all your heart, that he would be proud.