Excerpt
One night, Lauren was quite ill and vomiting frequently. She was unable to sleep and I asked her to sit with me. As I held her in my arms on the living room couch, she looked up at me, wide-eyed and helpless, and asked, “Daddy, am I going to be all right?”
She looked so small and vulnerable; she might have been ten years old again.
“Yes, sweetheart,” I said. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise. Just try and get some rest.”
She smiled and put her head on my shoulder. My reassurance made her feel better, even though she knew better. We both did. Those were just words. But I wanted to believe them myself more than anything. I wanted to believe that just saying so would make the cancer go away.
It was a difficult reality for me to come to terms with. My daughter was confronting the uncertainty and terror of a cancer diagnosis. As a father, I wanted to protect her and do everything possible to make things all right. It was instinctive. How could I tell her the truth, and at the same time accept that there was nothing I could do? Cancer was something that only her doctors and modern medicine could defeat. Her ultimate safety was out of my hands, and I felt completely powerless at a time when she needed me most. It was a debilitating feeling for me, but I did not want to cause her any further worries, so I tried my best not to let her see my feelings of helplessness. I would cry later, at moments when Lauren was not around to see me, the tears falling freely from my eyes. There were times I didn’t think they would ever stop.