There’s a misunderstanding about what it really means to ‘understand’ what someone is ‘going through’ when it comes down to losing a parent to cancer; at least, when you’re a middle-aged forty-something like me. It really doesn’t matter how genuinely well-intentioned these people are or even how close they are to you – they could be aunts or uncles or spouses or first-cousins or friends or lovers or whatever. No matter how much you adore the person who-is-not-your-parent-but-someone-else’s, no matter how much you read and learn about it, no matter how understanding or intelligent or educated or refined you are, you simply can’t ‘get’ something like this until you experience it first-hand.
Until you see one of the only two people in this world who love you unconditionally lose a little bit of their life each time you see them. Until you have to put any thoughts of shame and embarrassment aside and clean their excrement and the bloody sputum from their sticky coughs and still keep a smile on your face. Until random heart-scares and infections and near-fatal falls become a part of everyday life. Until you have to do this day after day after day; many times a day. Until you realise that it doesn’t get any better, it just gets worse. Until you see the person who took so much pride in carrying themselves with dignity and honour reduced to a feeble, humble, helpless and cranky infant of a human being. Until you realise it’s the last thing you ever wanted to see happen to the person that gave you life and still you have to go through it day after day, each and every single day.
Until you can’t sleep. But you have to return and keep smiling so they don’t know how you really feel. How lost and, even at forty-something years old, how vulnerable you feel that this person – the one who loved you unconditionally – is dying, and you can’t do a single thing about it. You cannot even take off the invisible mask that you have to wear.
The case is closed. No objections, your Honour.
I sentence you to Death. And not only is the cancer killing them, it’s killing a part of you too. It’s destroying everything that you held sacred and close and dear, turning you into a hard and indifferent person that nothing can ever touch anymore. Because everything that you had in a parent is being taken away from you and you are not allowed to complain at all. You may be in the position of having to think about how to console an inconsolable and aged surviving parent in the near future. You hope you will swim more often than you sink when it comes to playing your unfamiliar new role of being de-facto master of the house – your dying parent’s house – who is leaving a lifetime of life and living and laughter and sadness and good decisions and bad decisions and responsibilities and troubles up to you. Whether you want it or not. This is just a tiny glimpse in the dark when it comes to describing how it feels.
You will be touched by the compassion of others, even complete strangers, who have lost their parents to cancer and who reach out to offer you some comfort during this time. For, they are the only ones who truly know what a disturbing time of life this is. They have been through it. And that is why they feel it important to let you know that you are not alone. Because nobody who has not experienced it first-hand will ever be able to tell you. Only members of the Cancer Club will know the truth.
The grains of sand in the sand-timer are running low and, once that is done, you will truly know what it means to be alone. For now, you will look at your own children at the end of each day with dark circles under your eyes, you will feel like a dead-man-walking, and you will still smile. You will not let your child find out how devastated you are no matter how bad it gets. Because that’s the unconditional love of a parent. You will try unsuccessfully not to look at them and wonder if they would do the same for you when you die. To picture yourself on a hospital bed, stripped of dignity, self-esteem left by the door, and the only thing that will be on your mind is, “Let my child not suffer when I am gone.”
Ditio Syed Haq pens his grief upon losing his father, Syed Shamsul Haq
