Where love grows.

Today is World Cancer Day. Whenever these "cancer awareness" events pop up in my social feeds, I always take a little time to pay tribute to my father, whom we lost to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in March of 2011. I've done this for going on three years, as well as posting about him on the anniversary of his birth, and death, and Father's Day, and random days when he is on my mind.

But this morning as I uploaded his picture to my Facebook, I hesitated. Because while his illness and death certainly galvanized in me a profound hatred of cancer, I don't think that he would want to be perpetually remembered alongside the disease that took his life. I don't think that he would be happy to know that when these days come around on the calendar, I remember with great pain the weeks and days before he passed.

I've never written about that. I've read we're supposed to write about what hurts. Someday, I'll be ready. Today is not that day. I will only say, if you have never watched someone get sicker day by day... you can't really fathom the depth of helplessness it engenders in you.

My dad would not want to hear me tell about that pain.

What would my dad want me to remember?

Tomato vines. The smell of a two-by-four fresh from the lumber yard. The taste of green onions. Bare feet brushing sandy earth, beneath the swingset he built. All the possibilities of a sunny Saturday. Rain dropping into a green watering can. Salty boat smells. A thunderstorm on the front porch. Rough bark on a pine tree. Riding on a country road, going nowhere special. Time to wander around, with no particular place to go. A good cassette in the truck stereo. Fiddles and banjos. Junk shops. Hot coffee in a brown mug. The smell of old books, the feel of old papers, the swirls of old handwriting. Mysteries in the night sky. Hurting when others hurt. Laughing when others laugh. Dancing when the spirit moves you. Not forgetting that the world is full of magic, even when everyone sensible tells you otherwise. His warm hand on the top of my head. Being called "Darlin'." 

That's what I remember. And it hurts, oh, it hurts to tell you this. It hurts like it might hurt fabric to be woven, or it might hurt an acorn to pop open and make a baby tree. It has made me who I am.

I want you to know that cancer did not take my dad from me. It took him from this Earth, but it did not take him from me. He was so much more than cancer, so much bigger, so much stronger. It overtook his body, but it didn't take him, even though his body lost the fight.

To those of you who have lost people you love, to those who are fighting right now, to those who fought and won: you are in my heart.