Not Titillating

So, Cherie and I, our original plan for this blog was to post our tales of being Broken Girls--we were going to talk about sex and love and relationships, and unfortunately, our disappointment in most of those areas. But try as I might to sit down and write of these things, they are overshadowed by my present circumstances.

My father is dying.

In the beginning of this year, he was diagnosed with liver cancer and given less than a year to live. Later, it was discovered that instead, he has renal cancer and was a candidate for the trial of a new medication called Sutent that had some success in at least stalling the progress of this type of cancer. For the past six months, my father seemed to be stabilized. He still had cancer, but it was not getting worse.

Last week, in passing conversation, my mother mentioned that my father was having difficulty breathing. For someone like me, with a history of asthma and in a city experiencing 100+ degree weather, shortness of breath--while uncomfortable--is not necessarily alarming.

For someone with cormorbid renal cancer and some bizarre random kidney disease, and oh, did I mention, only one kidney due to a previous bout of supposedly unrelated cancer, however, this did not bode well.

My father's kidney is failing. The cancer medication is no longer working. My father is now receiving dialysis. He now has a permanent hole in his neck. For four hours, three days a week in order to maintain some comfort as the cancer progresses, he will sit in a chair and ponder his own mortality.

My father is 65 years old. He retired from a city job he hated for 30 years about ten years ago. He just began living, and now he is dying. And he knows this.

For most of my life, my father and I were distant, either physically, emotionally, or both. He worked loads of overtime at his crappy job to provide for my family, and we are vastly different philosophically. But it seems that there are more similarities than I realized, one of which is the most troublesome now.

Neither my father nor I have any religious faith. I don't know much about my father and because I know so little, I do not know why he is a non-believer. I can only guess, and the story I come up with is pretty sad.

As for myself, I actually remember the exact moment when I lost God.

An isolated, bookish child, I spent a lot of time reading. The written word has long been my social life, my escape, and my salvation at times. Around the age of 11, when I first started my Bat Mitzvah lessons, I began to contemplate God, religion, and the meaning of life. In my tiny, ghetto neighborhood library, I researched every religion I could, and though Hinduism rated high on the list, all of them seemed to fall short.

One day during a summer acting class in the old Masonic Temple in downtown Detroit, I stared up at the sky blue ceiling and asked God for some type of sign that there was more meaning and order to this world than just me lying there on the floor. I tried desperately to feel Him, or Her, or something--and I felt nothing.

I spoke to my father on the phone today and he is very depressed. He told me that he was tired and sad and then asked me, in a very matter-of-fact and yet boyish manner: "I am not going to make it, am I?"

I do not know what to do. I don't know what to say. I have no idea how to handle this situation without faith. I am a social worker by training and I know that I am supposed to listen and be empathic, but I feel so incredibly powerless.

So I decided that, besides love him, there is only one thing I can do. I will fight the insecure, self-censoring teenager that still lives deep within me and create my own meaning. I will record his life before he passes away. Every life deserves to be remembered by at least one person. His deserves to be known by many. I will write about him, about my family, about me, so that he may live on. That will be my faith, my God--documentation.