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Fatherless Day

Posted by 'Nathan Burgoine, 5 years ago

I lost my father to a very rare form of heart cancer when he was 61, which was close to four years ago now, and there are still triggers that bring back those last weeks with a frightening intensity. One of those is 'Father's Day.'

Today, a customer came in and sort of ground to a halt. I saw her looking at the "King for a Day!" signs and tearing up, and I knew immediately what was happening. So I said, quietly, "The first year is the hardest, isn't it?"

She nodded, and agreed - first Christmas, first Birthday, first Father's Day... there's a whole year ahead of "first (whatever) without" in store whenever you lose someone, and it brings things back.

We chatted for a little while (she, too, had lost her father to cancer, just last week) and she asked me what I did to cope that first year.

Honestly? For the most part I was extremely lucky to be starting a new relationship at the time, and thus had a new family to meet. I put my energy into that, and into celebrating my future father-in-law. And when my father's birthday rolls around, I always donate something to the cancer foundation he preferred, in his name.

We have a wonderful book right now, called 'the Last Lecture.' It speaks about what you would say, if you only had one last chance to say it (I'm grossly oversimplifying, of course), and in some ways, I was quite lucky. My father was coherent right up until he went in for a surgery he knew had only a 5% chance of success, and as such, everyone got to say "that last thing." He, of course, got the last word in (a trait of his) by leaving us a letter to find afterwards, but there was no sense of "if only..."

We weren't close, either. We'd only recently really begun to reconnect after a long term silence, and I imagine the impact of losing a "best buddy" father - like my sister went through - is so very much worse. But if you do have a father, and father's day is fast approaching, maybe take a page out of 'the Last Lecture' and say a few things you'd like to make sure you've said.

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