So my best friend called this morning from Texas to say that her Dad, who was diagnosed with lung & liver cancer, was taken to the hospital last night and is not expected to come out. She’s flying home to Canada as I write this but they don’t know if he’ll be able to hang on until she gets there.
My friend and I have been friends since Grade 1, that’s 32 years, and her family was my second family growing up. I was kind of scared of her Dad as a kid because to me he seemed gruff and stern, but he had an awesome sense of humour and I enjoyed his company. I actually lived at their house for a few months before I graduated from Grade 8.
I moved to a different city and she ended up moving to the US, but whenever she came home to visit her parents I was more than welcome at their house. In fact, I was always welcome whether she was there or not. I joke that I could simply show up at her parent’s house with a backpack and they’d make up the spare room for me.
My friend called me many months ago and said her Dad had been diagnosed with lung (and what they thought was) pancreatic cancer. This sounds terrible but my first thought was “No shit. Ya think?!” because both her parents are heavy smokers, have smoked seemingly forever and smoke in the house. I felt awful because my friend was in tears and I was trying to console her but my mind was thinking, “Duh, you’re a nurse. Your parents smoke like chimneys. You didn’t see this coming?”
So here it is, her father is dying before his time, and f’n cancer is once again taking someone’s loved one.
**Please, if you smoke, please quit now. ** Today. Not for yourself, but for your loved ones. For your children. For your children’s best friends who see you as another parent and don’t need to get that phone call at 7:30 am from your crying child because you’re dying in a hospital bed.
Thank you for listening.