by Chrissy Linn

Created on: October 23, 2009

"How Do You Spell "Cancer"?"

I was sick that morning. It was chilly and overcast while I waited outside. My mother told me that my Aunt Karen would pick me up soon, so I paced around in front of the apartment's back patio.

We were quiet in the car ride to the hospital, save for my occasional sniffling. My nose was running and I kept wiping snot onto my long sleeve. Oh gosh, I thought to myself. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm crying.

My mother didn't mention that my father wasn't conscious. Walking through the lobbies and hallways of the hospital, I expected to see him sitting up in the bed, everyone laughing and talking. Instead, I was greeted by absolute silence and several long stares. I didn't pay attention to, or maybe I avoided, looking at the bed where he lay, but later on my mom told me that the second I walked into the room my father opened his eyes briefly, and for what I think was the last time.

The last words I spoke to my father occurred a couple days earlier than the morning he was taken to the emergency room. He was resting in my parents' room, and on the bed I did my spelling homework. He hadn't moved or stirred for a while, and I heard some laboring breaths. To make sure he was okay, I asked for help with my work. How do you spell snooze? I knew damn-well how to spell it, but my ten-year-old self didn't have the courage to submit to the fact that he was sick and simply ask if he was alright. After some long seconds, he told me how to spell the word, but I already had it written down in the answer column.

The whole day at the hospital was a tense mess. My half-brother, Brian, and my mother usually stayed on each side of the bed, anxiously awaiting movement or speech from my dad. My other half-brother, Ronnie, arrived later with his two kids and wife. Ronnie had a brief moment in which he told our father how much he loved him, but for the most part, he was too scared to get too close to the bed. He couldn't handle the situation of death as easily as Brian.

That day, we all knew he would die. I knew it, even though I didn't know why or how. I didn't exactly know he had skin cancer. When I was eleven or twelve I finally learned that he had a bad mole on his back that was never taken care of. It developed melanoma and eventually traveled to his stomach. When I was eight and nine he had several surgeries to remove tumors in his stomach. I didn't know it was because of cancer. I didn't know why he was giving himself shots at night or why

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