I have really young parents. Really young.
They were quite the couple in High School.
She was in student counsel and quite the popular cheerleader.
He was the bad boy on a motorcycle who had a love of leather jackets.
Like a moth to a flame she was.
And from that whirlwind, crazy young love that seems to happen during those years …
They created me.
And they were young.
And we were all in it together.
Except when we weren’t and it was just a messy, confusing, horrible divorce followed by the void of a parent who never came around again.
For a long, long time, at least.
And I’d like to tell you it was too late. Because when he did show back up, it was.
But today I sat holding his hand as he fails from his battle with cancer.
And I watch him ingest the same pills Wayne did, and I see the same oxygen tank that Wayne used, and I see the pale skin, the papery texture, the fragile quality of walking he does.
And I realize that death has a way of equalizing most everything.
And so I sat and held his hand. I told him stories of my children as he slept.
And I rubbed his feet, never stopping because when I would, he would open his eyes and say, “This is the life.”
I knew better than to stop.
And I watched him sleep and in the silence I spoke to him in a hundred different ways.
None of them making any sense until you add the sum and realize that a girl always loves her dad.
I hope he understood that part.
Morphine makes it hard to follow along.
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