I am not sure how many of you actually know this but before I signed up for the race I had actually signed up for a different mission trip with AIM, it was a 9-month trip and we were going to 3 countries for 3 months each. Well I had signed up for that with a good friend of mine, and we were pretty excited to leave! So we had flights booked for training camp on Friday July 13, 2012 in the evening. Dad was doing ok and mom thought it would be a year of recovery for him so it would be an okay time for me to leave and dad was super stoked that I would be going. The cancer was gone but he wasn’t feeling well so he had been taken back to the hospital a few days before for a few more tests to see what was going on. So the night before I had packed my bag up and I was ready to leave the next day in the afternoon for training camp. In the morning I decided I would spend sometime with dad before I left for a week, not knowing that it would literally be the worst visit of my life.
Well I got there and it was just dad and I, it was nice, and I am not too sure what we were talking about but it probably had to do with my trip. Well then the doctor showed up; honestly I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like, his hair color or even his name. He asked where mom was or any of the other family members and I told him they had left, and gone home/ to work for a while. He proceeded to tell me that he couldn’t wait any longer and he had to tell us. At this point I believe I just kind of blacked out, the bits and pieces that I remember are: the cancer has spread, it is everywhere, untreatable, I’m sorry, I would like to say 3 months but usually when I tell people a time range it’s a lot less than expected. And that was it, tears welled up in my eyes, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t even look at the doctor, let alone look at my dad. I grabbed my phone and frantically started calling my mom but her phone was off (she never turns her phone off), so I call Cheri and she tells me mom went to take a nap and I shout at her but she isn’t close to home (she keeps asking lacey what’s wrong and I keep yelling, where is my mother?) so I hang up and I call moms office, and I yell at Al telling him to go wake up my mother NOW (and I don’t really remember these phone calls in too much detail but I think I may have cursed a few times, for that I am sorry).
By the time I am actually on the phone with my mom I am a mess, frantic and sobbing. I actually don’t even recall the phone call with my mother. But after that all I remember from that room is me sitting there looking out dads hospital window and bawling (I don’t think I have ever cried so much in my life). Dad kept trying to talk to me and tell me it was going to be ok, and that I shouldn’t worry, this is a part of life and probably some other things to try and comfort me, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t even look at him; until mom got there (and I regret this every day of my life) I couldn’t even hold his hand and be there for him. He was the one dying not me and there he was trying to crack jokes and comfort me, and I couldn’t even look at him or hold his hand.
For a long time I held a lot of anger and resentment towards my mother, for taking a nap that day and for taking so long to get to the hospital. I was so angry at her for leaving me alone with dad, she wasn’t there to support me and comfort me (how selfish is that?). But as I have thought about this day, and had nightmares about this day, time and time again I have started to realize that God put me there for a reason. I was meant to be at the hospital for a reason. Needless to say I didn’t go to training camp, I got an extra week with my dad (Praise the Lord we didn’t find out about this after I left for camp), I was there because then dad didn’t have to take this news alone, because if I would not have been there, who would have (everyone else had jobs). Mom also had the whole drive to the hospital to get her thoughts together and to pray about it and I think it was good that she had some time on her own to really accept and realize what was happening, so that she wasn’t a total wreck when she got to the hospital. I was able to see my dad yet again be the self-less hero he was to me, and comfort me in his time of need. Just reconfirming the fact that he was the strongest man I ever knew.
To be continued….
