slice of life challenge

My eyes try to focus on the pages of the magazine in my hands. The unshed tears make it hard. The scene is so foreign and yet a certain familiarity surounds it. Has it really been 21 years since I heard those fateful words, "your mom has terminal cancer"? Am I now doomed to hear the same news about my dad?

The doctor enters in a cheerful mood. Smiling as I am introduced as the "family gossip" by my dad. (Dad wasn't happy that I had informed my two brothers about this appointment) He must be about to tell us that the test results were a mistake. How could someone that smiles and jokes with you deliver the news that someone has cancer?

He leans back onto the counter and tells us that he is not the kind to sugar coat news. He tells us that they will need to do more tests, but that he is sure that my dad has cancer that has spread to his lungs. On the inside, my world crashes in. On the outside I ask a few intelligent questions, weakly smile at my dad, and thank the doctor. My dad's weak smile back at me seems to say, "we've been through this before haven't we kiddo?"

My father, who has always been so strong, the man that bought bras for me that first Christmas after my mom died because that is what my mom would have done and he felt the need to perform all her jobs as well as his own, is now facing the same disease she did.

We still do not know where the cancer originated or the treatment recommended. We will know more on Monday. I will tell my kids after we know more information. They know that Grandpa is sick and we are trying to find the cause. Dad is the only grandparent they have ever known. They see him everyday. Helping him through this will be hard on them.