When your parent gets a terminal diagnosis
One of my favorite bloggers in the entire world, Metro Dad, writes eloquently about receiving the news of his father in law’s cancer diagnosis:
Immediately as you walk in, your co-worker runs up to you. “Call your wife. It’s an emergency.”
In the seconds that it takes for you to dial her number, your mind races. Since your wife is the one calling, you assume that nothing bad has happened to her. What else would constitute an emergency? Has something happened to your daughter? Your heart is racing.
When your wife answers, all you hear are the anguished sounds of her sobbing uncontrollably. Between choking sobs and gulps of air, you hear only isolated words. Father. Liver cancer. Inoperable. Tumor. 8 cm.
Your gut wrenches. A sickening feeling falls into the pit of your stomach. For some strange reason, you’re reminded of that tragic morning of 9/11. Another beautiful day that started out with so much promise yet ended with so much pain.
While I don’t pretend to know what his wife and he feel like, I have gotten that news, too and it was like being lunched in the gut. Seriously, there is a reason the word “gut” shows up in this scenario when most anyone describes it.
There are so many emotions, so much information to process and instant growing up to do. You feel like things will be in upheaval for the rest of your life.
But, the one thing I want people to know about it is that you’re not alone when a parent gets a terminal diagnosis. It’s very very sad, and though you’ll never be the same, it won’t always be chaos and worry. Things will settle down in their own way eventually and there will be a bit of a new normal for a while.
And you know what?
It sucks. Plain and simple. It just sucks.
But, like I do from time to time around here, I just want people in this situation to know that they’re not alone. There’s lots of us out here who “get it” when you are told that a parent is going to die.
You know, when I heard my mother’s terminal diagnosis, I thought I was the most alone person in the world.
But I realized I wasn’t. It took time but as the finals days of her journey on this planet played out, I found that there was so many people that had empathy were everywhere. So many of us go through this. And it does get better than that moment when you hear those words “terminal.”
And, you are right as is he, we are not by ourselves in this.
Great Post.
I never “got it” until it happened to me. Now I understand.
Thanks for the reminder. As it turns out, this has not gotten much easier (parent or other loved one) when you go through it more than once, and you start getting that alone feeling all over again.
My father will be 60 this November of 2008, a little over a year ago he was diagnosed with FTD. Everyday he shows more and more signs of this disease. It is very hard on my mom, my sister and I. I have had strange feelings that I have never felt before. Just knowing what is going to happen in the near future is driving me crazy. I try to keep my senses about me and go on everyday and try to be there for my mother. But just knowing the suffering he is going through and how much worse its going to get for him, I feel for him so much. His mother passed away in the middle of the night right after his step father passed away. When he was a child he lost his brother and just recently lost his baby sister to breast cancer in her 40’s. His only remaining family is his healthy older sister and his father whom is reaching about 92 years old. Just thinking about everything he has gone through in life and now this…its very hard for me, my sister, my mother and most of all him. I just pray that God will be there for my family and everyone who is going through the same worries and rough times.