Today would have been my dad’s 76th birthday. On the 28th of this month, he will have been gone for 11 years. I miss him. He died from lung cancer. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in February of 2003, by May of 2003, he was gone.
His journey through chemo and radiation was like everyone else’s. One positive is that I got to spend a lot of time with him. When I got home from work, we would talk for hours about what was going on in the news, the world of politics, etc. He showed such great strength during his battle. I remember one day he was in tears. My mom asked him what was wrong; he said that he didn’t want Mart (my son) to see him like that, not being able to do stuff for himself. My mom told him, “Mart doesn’t care, he’s just glad that you’re here.” Mart was only 8 at the time. During my dad’s battle with cancer, I really learned how special of a kid that I had, not that I didn’t already know. One day my mom and I needed to go to Walmart. We didn’t want to leave my dad home alone, and Mart said, “Mommy I want to go, but I’ll stay home with granddaddy.” My heart just melted. It was confirmation that we (me and the villagers) were doing a great job raising him.
Over the course of his illness, our house became the Harris hangout. There was food. There’s always food. We had people coming and going. There would be people scattered throughout the house, some in the kitchen, and some in my dad’s room laid across the bed or sitting in chairs. I remember we had a birthday cookout for my dad and because he couldn’t come outside, we opened the windows and everyone sang Happy Birthday from the yard.
The day he died, my mom was talking about how she was 
going to look into having someone come and stay with my dad during the day, since she and I, both worked. A couple of days prior, my mom had gotten my dad a wheel chair because it was getting harder and harder for him to move around. It took a lot of his strength.
That morning, he had gotten up and my mom helped bathe him and got him ready for his doctor’s appointment. He was in his wheel chair in the kitchen. My aunt was coming to take him to the doctor’s because my mom had to take my brother to catch the airport shuttle to go back to Seattle. I was home with my dad and Mart was still sleep. My mom and brother left, so that she could drop him off. I was in the living room and he wanted to sit with me and talk to me. Shortly after my mom left, my dad said, “She’s not going to make it back.” He grabbed my leg and went into cardiac arrest. I was terrified. I pulled myself together and called 9-1-1. The dispatcher asked if I could get my dad out of the wheel chair. I told them no, my dad was 6’5 and was probably a good 190-200 pounds. As soon as I hung up the phone, I called my uncle in VA. I told him that I had just called 9-1-1 and that it wasn’t looking good. I knew that it would 
take him at least 2 hours to get up the road.
Luckily, the fire department is just around the corner from our house. They were there within a matter of minutes. I know there were probably like 9-10 people that walked through the door. It took five of them to get him out of the wheel chair. I was praying that Mart didn’t wake up and come out into the living room to see all of these men working on his granddaddy. Thank God he didn’t. My aunt that was supposed to take my dad to the doctor came after they had taken my dad to the hospital. She told me to tell my mom that she would be back for her, but she had to run home. When my mom returned home from dropping my brother off, I met her at the door. I told her that I had to call 9-1-1 and that they had taken my dad to the hospital. My aunt came back and got my mom. I couldn’t leave because Mart was still sleep. I woke him up and got him ready for school.
I kept getting phone calls from my cousins telling me that I needed to get to the hospital. Before I could leave and go to the hospital, I had to call the airport and make sure that my brother didn’t get on his flight back to Seattle. Our next door neighbor and a family friend both went to meet the airport shuttle and were fighting over who was going to bring him to the hospital.
My whole family was at the hospital. There is something 
about my family and hospitals. When our loved ones are there, we have a way of taking them over. My mom’s siblings, my dad’s siblings, and my cousins were all at the hospital. Everyone was in tears. I remember being in the room and thinking to myself, I have never seen my uncles cry and to see them cry, I knew things were bad.
The doctor informed my mom that nothing else could be done. My dad’s organs had begun to shut down. When they unhooked him from the machine, he was gone within minutes. It had been raining all day. Me and the rest of my family had been crying all day and as soon as my dad passed, it stopped raining, the sun came out, and a rainbow appeared outside of his window. I believe it appeared as a symbol from God to let us know that he was okay, that he was home.
As if losing my dad wasn’t hard enough, I had to tell my son that his granddaddy was gone. When I picked him up from the babysitter’s house, I told him I had something to tell him. When I said that, he said, please don’t tell me granddaddy is dead. He just burst into tears. As you can imagine, that broke my heart and then I was in tears all over again.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5
Sometimes I struggle, being a daddy’s girl without a daddy. I think about my future relationship with a man that will never get to meet my dad. My future boo joint joint (lol) or husband 
will never know the man that my father was. He will never know where I get my moodiness. He will never see where I get my creativity. He will never be threatened by my dad to take care of me, his girl. I think about how any future kids that I have will never know how great their granddaddy was. It’s hard to be around his side of the family. Many times, I feel like I don’t belong. Although we are very close, I feel like my 
connection to them is gone and that I’m intruding on their family time. When my dad died, my uncle told me that I still had a dad, assuring me that if I needed anything that he would be there for me and he has been, but in all honesty, it’s not the same.
When I attend family functions, my cousins usually chalk my anti-socialness up to me being moody, and a part of it might be, but most of it is me missing my dad, wishing that he was there and being sad that he’s not. I see them there with both of their parents and their families and I feel like a friend of the family, like an invited guest. It has nothing to do with them, they just don’t understand. Having shared all of this, although I may have my moments, I know that my dad is always with me. I carry him in my heart and sometimes I can smell his cologne. I used to think I was going crazy until one day; I called Mart into the room and asked him if he smelled anything, he said, “Yeah, I smell granddaddy.”
May is always hard because it’s his birth month and also the month that he died. I shed some tears writing this blog and I’ll probably shed some more on his angelversary, but with everything else in my life, I’m in a good place. Although I would love for him to still be here, that would be selfish of me because he would be here suffering. I find comfort in knowing that he is at peace and that he is cancer free. I’m glad that I had him for as long as I did and that we had the chance to create all of the memories we could in the time that we had together.
Sending kisses to heaven.
Gone, but not forgotten!
LESSONS OF LOVE FROM MY FATHER 