The surgery.
The one we hoped might change everything.
Instead, it confirmed what I think part of me already knew.
He came out of the theatre with a single incision.
That was the sign.
The one the surgeon told us to look for—the quiet symbol that meant there was no hope left.
The tumour had spread.
Too fast.
Too far.
We had five months left, not that we knew that at the time , but we knew time was borrowed and the sand in the hour glass was running low.
But this isn’t a sweet story about a daughter grieving a perfect father.
This is the truth.
And the truth is—I’d already been grieving him for years.
He wasn’t really there for most of my life.
Not when it mattered.
Not when I needed him to choose me.
He chose women.
He chose booze.
He chose silence and shouting and shutting me out.
And I learned, quietly, that I wasn’t enough to stay sober for.
Or to stay home for.
Or even to stay kind for.
And maybe that would’ve been enough hurt for one lifetime—
but then he wrote me out.
Him and her.
A letter.
Calling me poison.
Telling me I was no longer part of the family.
Like I was some illness to be cut out.
Like I was the tumour.
And still—
I showed up.
I was in hospital myself, barely holding it together,
and I signed myself out just so I could get on the bus.
Every single day.
To go to his house.
And feed meds into the stomach that was rotting from the inside out.
The stomach where Terrance, the tumour, had made his home.
The stomach that should’ve been cut open and scraped clean—but wasn’t.
And she—
the woman he chose over me—
was fucking other men behind his back while I was measuring meds and wiping vomit off his chin.
And he still defended her.
Still let her stay.
But I stayed too.
Because we were blood.
And that meant something to me.
Even when it didn’t seem to mean a single fucking thing to him.
People talk about grief like it’s all love and longing and candlelight.
But sometimes it’s rage.
It’s betrayal.
It’s feeding a dying man through a tube while wishing he’d just once looked you in the eyes and said,
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
He never did.
He left before I got the apology.
Before he told me I wasn’t poison.
Before he ever really chose me.
But I chose to stay.
And that has to count for something.
Even if it broke me to do it.
I survived him.
I didn’t become him.
And I’m raising a daughter who knows, without question,
that she is loved.
And that’s the most painful, powerful thing I’ve ever done.