“That First Cup of Morning Coffee…Again” (For my Dad) By Roel Adrian Garcia I started out that morning pacing through the small rental house in nervous anxiety, staring at the phone, willing it to ring. The phone stared back in mute defiance. It would ring when it wanted to. I mumbled a string of curses. I wanted it to ring. No. I needed it to ring. It would provide me with the news I wanted to hear. With the pacing only stretching out time, I tried occupying myself with chores. Sweeping the kitchen, washing the few dishes in the sink, cleaning toilet. They were quiet, mundane tasks with the phone only a few steps away from me at all time. I performed each job in a detached methodical nature with one ear constantly on the listen for the phone. A million questions ran through my head as I worked and waited. But one pervasive and intrusive question kept dominating all others and pushed itself to the forefront of my mind. What if the news was positive? I cringed at this thought and pushed it away. All it did was keep coming back and becoming bigger and louder in my head. A month before, my dad went to the doctor after having issues with his stomach. He’d lost his appetite and had lost strength in his body. He went to the doctor and the doctor made a referral for some blood work and tests. After these preliminary results came back, a determination in his condition was made. Cancer. I was blown away by the news. Cancer? No way. That was something someone else’s family somewhere was dealing with. It was foreign to our family. We were immune to that disease. Cancer did not afflict our family. There was no history of it in our family. It was a mistake. But it was no mistake. My dad had cancer. That news was hard to take. He was a healthy man in his sixties, newly retired, and was now a fulltime rancher. He wasn’t supposed to get cancer. But he had cancer. Now as I worked and listened for the call, I waited for the big news. What was the issue. A CT scan was going to be performed and the results would conclude and clarify the problem. Clarify the cancer and origins. I knelt by the toilet and used the large brush to scrub at the inside of the bowl. The bristles scraped at the porcelain. It was mindless work. All my thoughts focused n my dad. I see his face, tanned by years in the sun, his eyes dark and gentle, his sideburns long and gray. He’s a quiet man who listens more than talks. But when he does talk, he speaks volumes. A man of few words. No, everything would be OK; it had to be. Bad things never happened to good people like my dad. Certainly not a serious cancer. A gentle man like my dad did not deserve cancer. I tapped the brush against the side of the lip of the bowl and flushed the toilet. I put the brush away and washed my hands. As I did, I stared into the mirror. My eyes were dark and heavy, sad. I took off my glasses and ran water over my face to clear it and cool it off. As I was drying my face with a towel, the phone rang. The sound was loud and harsh in the silence of the late morning in the house. It crashed through my senses like a train rushing through tracks. For a second, I was paralyzed, the towel covering half my face, my eyes blinking. The phone rang. I was frozen. Suddenly I wanted nothing to do with picking up that damned phone. Suddenly I wanted to be away from here, away from that messenger on the other end. Then I grabbed my glasses and stepped out into the kitchen and grabbed the phone before the answering machine took over. “Hello,” I said. My voice was quiet and low. It was a whisper. It was my sister. Her voice was shaky and she was crying. My stomach plummeted and suddenly I could feel the blood coursing through my veins, pulsing with each heartbeat. It was deafening. I put my glasses on as I walked around the kitchen and living room. I paced, not wanting to sit down, not able to. My legs shook as I listened to my sister tell me the news. It was not goo. My dad had a large mass in his colon. It was malignant and the thought was the cancer had spread. The mass was several inches long and had to be removed soon. Within the month. Chemo was in his future. I grabbed onto the edge of a chair as everything my sister told me sunk in. But did it really sink in that day? No, all I really knew was he had a large tumor in his colon and it was to be removed. That, and chemo. Those two aspects of the conversation stood out. it was not good. I can’t recall how long the conversation lasted, but I’m sure it was short and to the point. From that point on, it would be my sister calling me to give me news of my dad’s condition and his treatments. I hung up the phone, my mind totally numb and my body not much better. I finally sat down and stared out the window at the sunny spring morning. It was cool and beautiful outside. The flowers were blooming and trees were becoming lusher as their branches filled with leaves. And my dad also had something budding inside of him, but it was no daisy or iris or lily; it was nothing that would bring pleasure to someone’s senses. As I stared out the window, I thought of my dad and how scared he probably was, how unsure of his future, questions he might have. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Tears ran down my face and my thoughts became hoarse and fuzzy. I hate crying or tearing up. But no one was home and I had no one to answer to. I let the tears run, slow and steady. How foreign they felt on my face. I wiped at them. “Dad has…cancer,” I said. I let the word sink in. But it didn’t really. That sinking in took many months after many conversations and many writings and to finally accepting that he had the big C. But for now< I looked out the window at that beautiful morning and thought of my dad, thought of that gentle man, that quiet man, that loving man. Images crowded into my hazy mind, all including that man. My first memory I can remember, my dad and grandfather and myself (at age four) at La Chiva, with my grandfather and I remaining in the truck while my dad left to find a missing cow. My dad saying he’d donate one of his eyes to me, after my eyesight went bad at fifteen, so I would be able to see better. There was my brother, my dad and I building a fence, fixing a windmill or cutting cattle in the corrales. There I sat on the fender of the old Massey Ferguson as my dad planted corn in the acre behind our house. There was my dad providing me endless rides to Kingsville from the ranch, so I could get to my college classes. I saw the man who struggled all his life to provide for his family, the man who asked for nothing and expected nothing, the man who led a simple life, content to be a rancher, the man who was happy to be a father; who derived joy from his grandchildren. I saw a man who was poor by society’s standards but rich in his heart. A man who succeeded in life. I cried in silence, crying for my father more than anyone. My heart went out to him and I wanted to hold him then. But he was in Texas and I was in Michigan. I knew the road ahead was going to be long and difficult and full of emotion and pain. My dad’s struggle with colon cancer lasted almost three years. He did have a portion his colon removed but the cancer metastasized to his liver and the tumor there never quite shrunk enough for removal. He underwent countless chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In the end he went into Hospice in October 2007. He died on Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 9:30 p.m. He was surrounded by his family and was loved when he died as he was loved in life. Today, nearly six years after his death, the love for my father remains steadfast and so many memories flood my mind when I think of that man and the influence he’s had in my life as a person and as a man and as a father. I miss that man more than anything and have to wonder how quickly he went from my life. Life is unfair an d can be cruel and we must accept it that way. But we don’t have to like it. My dad used to have this habit of sipping, well, more like slurping, at that first drink of his morning coffee at breakfast. Then he’d say, “Ahhh.” I was a cranky person at breakfast and it used to drive me nuts when he would do it. Then, I think he used to do it on purpose to irritate me. A once commented to a friend about this situation and my friend, in her wisdom, said, “When he’s gone, you’ll want to hear that sound again.” You know what? She was right. I’d give anything to sit beside him at the kitchen bar during breakfast and let him have that first cup of morning coffee. I love you, pops.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:20:23 +0000
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