When it don't come easy

On any given day, if anyone was to ask me if dealing with cancer has brought us closer as a family, without thinking I'd say yes. But when I step back and look at the situation from a different vantage point, I'd have to say that I've found us all a little broken in our own dark corners. The emotional consistency of the family goes up and down as fast as the wildest rollercoaster, and the hardest part is realizing that though we yearn for it, at times we absolutely refuse anyone to catch us on the way back down. Including, at times, one another.
I think the side of the disease least talked about, is the way a person changes. I may speak only for myself, but before my father was diagnosed.. I can't say I really knew him. He worked long hours and spent weekends hunting and fishing. Infact half the time in my childhood i tried to avoid him at all costs because he was the "no" parent, and any direct confrontation with him meant I was in trouble. I met my dad when he was diagnosed. Like really met him.
I remember it being important to him to talk to each of us individually about the doctors putting, as he put it, an "expiration" date on him. I asked him one time if he was scared. And for the first time in my life I saw my dad cry. My dad, strong, masculine, flanel wearing, hard calloused worn hands from working since the day he was 18. A strong tower weeping and melting. I think it was that day my emotional state of mind changed forever. I wasn't safe any more. I didn't have the excuse of being young and blissfully ignorant. I was dealing with death. And at the beginning of my journey, how strange to be at the end of his.
I was in New York the morning my mother left. The phone beside my hotel bed rang at 11 am. He was crying on the other end. Sobbing. Through a trembling voice he told me she had left. He sounded like an abandoned child. I was thousands of miles away. There was nothing I could do but cry with him. I found, inbetween my own sobs, I wasn't even crying for my own saddness but because I was scared for him. He said he was alone, and though I knew it was a hard promise to make, I promised him I would make sure he never felt alone. After that summer I moved home.
There are days I feel like no matter what I say, or what I do, it's never enough. Like no matter how much I give and give he'll always want her here. He'll always wish it was her making him dinner, driving him out to do things. And though I know better than to let it get to me, sometimes I wish he'd be comforted by my presence. I think in a sense we all miss her. It makes the house seem, even now, incomplete. It lack's that kind of motherly glue. That sureness, that other voice of reason.
Relationships become chores. Even between my brothers and I. When we fight, we fight about things that have nothing to do with one another. We fight because we have no one else to fight with. Because we can't be mad at my dad, because he can't handle it. Because he didn't really do anything wrong, because all the things he does do wrong he doesn't know he's doing them wrong. We let little things offend us. The fact Cody hasn't cleaned the bathroom in a week bugs me. The fact I don't cook red meat bugs my dad. Cody's "sqaureness" bugs Jake, and Jake's job bugs Cody. Things that mean nothing. But irritate us because the cancer can't. Because the cancer has no resolve. Because it's hard to wake up in the morning feeling like you have control. Because we know, whole heartedly, that we don't.
I know he, my father, hates it. One time Cody hit the end of a tempermental rope and it broke my dad's heart. "I hate that this is happening to my family." I hate it too. But I have to reassure him we'll have good days and bad ones, and that we know better than to let the bad ones define us. And I hope more than I know, but someone has to say it. Someone has to stop the crying, the yelling. Even break the silence. Someone has to soften the fall. And that is how we deal with cancer. By falling... landing on the softest earth we can find and walking it off.

 I wrote this poem a couple moths ago and have since performed it at a few open mics. I hope you like it...

On my 16th birthday
I
turned 30
And
found out what it meant
to be grown.
I was weighted by
disease
and
became emotionally prone…
To loss
I suffocated
childhood
Drowned out
angst with
ekg machines and shots of chemo
I am old
in my unforgiving
basking
in toxic mishaps of
 my past
and
my present
He is a rock
And I
liquefied in a
huge mass
of ocean
crash into
his strength
His one job
is to survive
My one wish
is
So do I.

And what happened
On the day
the music died?

The plane went down
And
cancer was born
From
The broken hearts
Of the
left behind.
Survivors shaken blind
The moon draggin
The daily grind
And I was touched by
A force
Unkind

I was
Quaked awake.
Faked
Out
By
Faith

God,

if you can hear me now

Can You make a noise?

Electrocute my stubborn poise

Make me silent
Make me coy
And make
All this
MOVE.

I’m budging on
My world view
Breathing on beat
But never on que
He was like the color blue
Deep
and always soulful.

And what is to become
Of this
My heart obstructed
Our lives
Dismissed.
My lips longing
For a healing kiss.
And in the midst
Of suffering…
My love has been revealed.
And in the midst of inner war
My love has been revealed
And in the midst of all of this
My love has been revealed