I remember the day he told me.
Driving down Deerfield road he said so casually,
I have cancer.
The word that we’ve been conditioned to fear, the one that we associate with our
world falling apart, the word that we never want to hear come from the mouths of
our loved ones.
But there it was, spoken with such ease, the word released from my fathers
mouth.
I’ve never been good at emotions or feelings or any of these human things that
you're supposed know how to express naturally. So as he told me I just sat there
in silence, the only sound being the soft hum of the highway around us.
And we drove home.
We didn’t really talk about it much, just went through the motions like that was
enough and it was.
The surgery was quick and before we knew it, he was cancer free and i just
assumed that wed go on with our daily lives that easily and for a while we did.
But the book didn’t end there. Like every good story, there’s a central conflict,
one that we avoid or even face but after some time it reappears as if to say, you
thought i'd just go away didn’t you?
and it came back. With a vengeance, one that would not be so easily cured like
before, one that would change my life and force me to confront the feelings from
which id always tried to hide.
And this time when he told me there was no silence and no casual tone in his
words  I could hear the tremble in his voice as he knocked on my door, he never
knocks. And I knew in that moment that something was not in place. And I could
tell from the fear plastered on his face that he was scared. The man I was
looking at appeared as a lost child, not the strong confident man that I call my
father.
And he told me with the fear in his eyes and a tremor in his voice followed by
the sentence,
"We’ve got so much we’ve yet to accomplish."
And I knew, this was just the beginning of a whole another battle.
The chemotherapy took his silver locks but not his spirit, took his weight but
not his soul, it tore and it ate at his body until the man that stood before me
seemed almost unrecognizable but he had made a promise, one that he had no
intention of breaking. So I stood beside him during infusion after transfusion
with a heavy heart and the fear that I could possibly lose him but never once
did I let it show. I held myself strong because he did. I never let myself get
discouraged because if he could be tough, than I could too.
Sitting on my bed one, weak and at his lowest, he told me to start planning. He
said that our lives were only just starting and that this was merely a wakeup
call to start living and that he wouldn’t dare give up because for 17 years he
has been my rock and he would give anything to see me grow up and that he wasn’t
going to take no for an answer that I was going to write our bucket list and
that he was going to beat this cancer.
And he did.
One Sunday in September we went for a drive.
Something that I so often took for granted and now couldn’t be more grateful for.

And with the sun blaring down on us and the clouds filling in the gaps of blue,
I realized that its moments like these that are the ones to cherish.
Its moments like these that define our lives and the casual routine of our being.
So hug your parents a little bit longer, squeeze them a little bit tighter, make use of
the time you have together because you never know when one car ride might change
everything.