My Hero

pabarilife - 14 Jul 16

When the hero of a film is wounded you feel bad. You want him to get better and save the day! Essentially he should regain all his strength, kill the bad guy and restore peace. Well, that’s fiction at its best because real life is not always like this.

My dad is my hero. Growing up I have such happy and fond memories of a wonderful childhood, provided by my parents. As a little girl, my dad would do regular night shifts and hated it when he would go to work at night. I used to feel scared and would always sleep with his t-shirt, basically use it like a comforter. At night I wanted him home. To protect us.

Throughout my childhood my dad played with me, took me and my brothers on wonderful holidays, helped me with school work, planned my birthday parties and worked damn hard with my mum to provide for my brothers and I. He came to visit universities with me, helped me move into my student accommodation and gave me away at my wedding. He is a man I love with all my heart and I cherish him. He is also a wonderful and loving grandfather to my daughter.

The way I look at my dad I can already see my daughter look at her daddy the same way. That precious bond. The unspoken love. To me, my dad was like a modern day superhero. No weaknesses and no faults. One summer, after my placement year in industry, my dad became slightly unwell. After a few weeks he noticed a lump and a routine biopsy was performed.

A week or so later he went back for the results with my mum and I watched the car pull back into the drive in. As they got out the car, my brothers and I were trying to work out how their moods were from their faces. He gathered us in the living room and told us all to sit down. I could see he was upset, a worry across his face and then he said 4 words that struck right through me. ‘Kids, I’ve got cancer’

Right there, at that moment my life, my world changed. I was looking at this big, strong and successful man tell me he was very sick. Shock and disbelief don’t truly describe how I felt. My unbreakable dad was hurt. He was wounded. He needed help. And I couldn’t do anything for him. I felt destroyed.

How could he get sick? Why him? What has he ever done to anyone? I can’t live without him! What about my mum? How will she cope? I watched her sit there silently, tears streaming down her face. My beautiful mother, broken.

My parents have always been a team. A tag-team. A perfect combination of parents. Now my mum will be going at this alone, while my dad takes a long break. The strength, the resilience, the determination I saw in my mum still astounds me today. She became my mum and dad overnight. My brothers became the men of the house. Everyone stepped up! Except me.

I couldn’t. I became bitter. I refused to believe he was so sick. My dad was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and I would sit in the university library researching into it, putting all my energy into my university work. I powered on like this for weeks. One morning I woke up, went to kiss my dad to tell him I was leaving and I became so angry at him. I hated that he was so unwell. He was loosing his hair. He was loosing weight. The chemotherapy had taken a hold of him. Did I blame him for becoming so unwell?

I walked out his room and straight out of the house. I practically ran to the bus stop. I didn’t even notice the bus drive past or the fact I was crying. I had finally accepted it and I felt completely defeated. My dad was unwell. Really unwell. I blamed him for getting unwell. He had a high powered job in the telecommunications industry and I felt the stress and lifestyle had taken its toll on him.

I ran back to the house straight in my parents room and cried on his shoulder. My dad was consoling me, hugging me, being my strength when he was so sick. What a man! No child should ever see a parent become so unwell. Its heartbreaking. My dad completed his course of chemotherapy, not without a few scares along the way. I used to get regular nightmares and I would wake up suddenly to make sure he was still in his bed. Im not the same person anymore because I feel bruised by the experience, and feel my dad has been through so much.

Can you really love someone so much? Can a daughter be so dependent on her dad? Can a dad have such an impact on his daughter’s life? My dad has and he does! By the grace of god he has been in remission for a number of years. Not a day goes by that I am not thankful to all the doctors and nurses for helping him.

But there is one person who held my family together. The glue. Who became the backbone for our family. My mum. I must have done something really amazing in my previous life to have been given my mum and dad.

I watch my dad play with my daughter now. He plays with her exactly how he did with me. My daughter will look at her grandad and smile from ear to ear. These are precious moments I am very grateful for.

My dad is my hero. Actually he’s my superhero. He fought off and killed the bad guy. My mum is his strength, and without her strength he wouldn’t have believed he could have got through this. By doing so, he saved us. They both saved this family.

pabarilife

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