I am not a religious woman. Neither were you. Well, of course you weren’t. But I mean to say that you weren’t religious either. So this is not a letter TO you, per se, but rather an open letter to you for me. And for anyone who cares to read it.
It is almost impossible to fully articulate all that has happened over the last two years of my life. I still can’t believe it’s been two years. Oddly, it somehow feels like a lifetime ago and like it was just yesterday, all at the same time.
In the days before you succumbed to the cancer you had been battling for 3 ½ years (this time around), we gathered around you. It was hard to believe that in the span of two weeks, we had come to this point.
A phone call in the middle of my Chinese Cooking Class at the Chicago Cultural Center that I should come home. Fast. As in…get in the car and leave immediately if you can. I made it, with barely enough time to catch my breath and go in to the office to see you. But it isn’t you.
This is not the man who taught me the expression “a day late and a dollar short.” I still shudder to think of that day when I realized that your silence was more troubling than any angry outburst I had witnessed over the years. This is not the man who insisted that if I was going to play the flute, it was going to be the top of the line open-key flute with accompanying piccolo. Totally necessary for an eleven-year-old. Or who provided my oft-repeated anecdote about insisting that my 2nd grade self was going to get LA Kicks with the flashing feels because EVERYONE else in my class had them and you would be damned if your granddaughter would be the only one without them. This is not the man who beamed when he gave me the title “Distribution Marketing Manager” of our family business when I was 14 years old. And subsequently, who taught me that the title was more symbolic and meaningful than the $0.25/hour raise that went along with it.
In my last visit home, the last weekend in January and just TWO weeks prior, you were up and walking. It was clear that you were tired, but you mustered up enough energy to walk around at the party and chat with people.
You perked up when my brother and I brought home ice cream. It was probably the first thing you had eaten in days. But we sat and ate ice cream and talked about politics and Libertarianism.
And that was it. That is my last living memory of you. It was simple and sweet. And it was just perfect.
I choose this over the pin-dropping silence, over the eerily touching moment when the family gathered together, over the need to hold each other up because we could no longer stand by ourselves.
I choose to focus on this as my last moment and memory with you because they had nothing to do with cancer. Since that night, nearly every moment of my life has.
Since February 13, 2010, I have dedicated more of my time to one cause than I ever could have imagined.
I have tried (desperately) to make better choices about the people I decide spend my time with. I sometimes fail, but I’m getting there. I still feel like you are playing a trick on me every time the guy I happen to be dating mentions that he is attracted to the Libertarian Party. This has happened 3 times now, by the way. “Of course he is,” I think to myself, “what kind of horrible joke is this, G-pa?!”
I have to laugh every time I come across a photo of us, hoping that it will show the smile I *know* you always had in your heart for me, but knowing that it will have your straight-faced nod of approval.
I have recommitted my life to health and fitness. This is old news by now, but still something that you inspired, in a roundabout way.
I have run three marathons (and counting) in your name.
Sometimes people tell me that you must be proud of me, or that you would be if you were here.
If they really knew you, they would know that if you were here to see it, you’d think I was crazy but you would cheer me on, anyway.
I think of you all the time. And how tired you must have been after all of those years of fighting.
I do this for you. And for all of the other survivors, victims, families, and fighters.
That is why, even when I am tired, I will not give up. Not in a marathon, not in my efforts to fight cancer, not in my support of cancer research.
I love you very much. And I always will.
Andrea
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