Shine A Light On Me

By the end of January, I had begun to feel doubt that my dad was going to live to see May. He was no longer driving and could barely stand or walk. His appetite was somehow getting worse. His unspoken goals were: eating and not sleeping all day. One day I let him sleep in, thinking that he would benefit from it. As if it would matter or that he’d wake up feeling less like shit. I could tell he was annoyed when he got up. He knew what I didn’t want to admit, I wanted another hour to feel normal. I felt awful. I realized then how precious of a situation time was to him, eating at the same time each day, trying to sustain energy levels so they wouldn’t deteriorate further. 

I started to notice that he was swollen badly in his face when he woke up. In past visits for his chemo treatment, he would sometimes get IVs for hydration. The fluids rejuvenated him and gave him energy. Now instead they were causing random swollen limbs. As I helped to rearrange his heating pads across his legs he’d murmur, “My body’s shutting down on me.” I looked on in muted concern. What could I say? 

Everyday I was checking to see what was swollen. His left arm, his left leg? How bad today? He tried desperately to eat as much as possible but it wasn’t working anymore. He’d get a few bites in and become disgusted. Plates of food went back to the kitchen, then into the trash. Again he would say, “We gotta find something I can eat.” The dread made its way up to my neck.

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One afternoon I accidentally started a small fire in the garage while trying to use the toaster oven. My mom came in and saved the day while I had become frozen with fear. As we stood there watching it extinguished, all I could think about was what if there had been a fire? What would we do? How would we get my dad out of the house safely and quickly? What if there was an emergency? Those concerns started to torment me daily.

The usual online chats with Jon were becoming a struggle. I didn’t envy him. Most of the time we managed some normality and pleasantries, I would even try to chat with the cat. It killed me to be away from them while going through the worst thing I’d ever experienced. It felt like someone taking my insides and tearing them in two different directions. Sometimes it was nice to see their little faces but sometimes it felt as cruel as everything else out of my reach, more torture. 

The time apart was devastating. Some days I simply couldn’t handle seeing them. On a few occasions, I flew into a rage and would hang up. I felt as though Jon didn’t fully understand what I was going through, but it wasn’t his fault. None of it was anyone’s fault. Nobody understood what was going on in that house. Texting in a chat box was worse. Peering into a bright window of a computer screen, desperately looking for a shape of a face or emotional response that can never meet your expectations. Sometimes I’d go in the garage with the laptop to video chat and not wake anyone. There was an unusual mixture of crying and then normal conversations.

Jon weathered each storm by my side, including the everyday ups and downs of my dad’s cancer. He always seemed happy to be there and take the brunt of my pain. Something that would send most people bolting. The same reliable lovely human I met over a decade earlier in our sculpture class in Houston. He never once acted as though any part of my life or personality was too much or not enough. I’ve never been sure how I managed to find a person so loving and patient. 

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One day Jon jumped up and retrieved a sticky note that he’d jotted something down on. Something that he thought I’d enjoy. “If you hold up a straw to the sky and look through it, in that narrow opening would be 10,000 galaxies and 100 billion stars.” And he was right, I did enjoy it. I shared the finding with my dad who also appreciated it. I still have the sticky note.

My dad was always the one that talked to me about space when I was a kid. He was always telling me random facts and information. Sometimes I tried to save things to share with him. He also got a kick out of my Earth Sky app that showed real-time locations for all planets. He loved all things science but especially space. I have a vivid memory of my mom and dad taking me to see the movie Contact. The beginning of the movie featured a montage of space, as it gets further away from the earth. He would brag that he knew each and every part, and he did. I was equally dazzled at seeing a female scientist as the main character. I was completely captivated by the story.

I remember after the movie was over, we were at King Food, chatting about it. I was unsure of what my dad’s response would be, so I waited. Smirking and looking out the window, in amusement he said, “I bet you thought you were going to see little green men!” He enjoyed the idea that humans aren’t as open-minded, relying on familiarities to feel safe and that an advanced civilization would understand these emotional confines. 

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Since we lived down the street from Clear Lake and NASA, he took me to Space Center when it first opened. There we had our first photoshop experience of our lives. We had to lay flat on our stomachs, on a chair, with our legs bent behind us and arms at our sides like seals. Our picture was superimposed to look like we were floating in the space station. I’ll always remember how giddy he was over the whole thing. It was pretty funny. It’s one of my favorite photos.