It Rises and It Kills

He sat there at age 14 making his first big mistake; the first mistake that would affect someone else’s life forever. It was mine, his daughters. He took the neatly wrapped death and placed it in his mouth. He lights it. He smokes, for no reason, with no intention of future harm, just ‘living in the moment’. More like killing the future; his future and mine.
I sat there at age 13 making my first big impact, a good one at that. It affected those around me, the ones I hold so dear. Mine and my fathers. I took his neatly wrapped death and placed it in the garbage. I talk, for lots of reasons, to save him and save our future. You could say ‘Mind set on the path ahead’. This was one of my many attempts to save our future; his future and mine.
We sat in the kitchen and I talked for minutes, then hours. His tricky lawyer talk and new change of subject wouldn’t get him out of this one, not this time. This was not going to be another try fail experiment of his; this was going to be it. He had turned 50 and enough was enough, he wasn’t the young foolish kid he once was. He knew the harm and the risks and I was done. This was my last try and I feared even quitting now wouldn’t save him.
“It’s me or the cigarettes, I can’t look at you, I can’t talk to you knowing that your lungs could crumble at any second” It’s all I could manage for right now.
I know those words still echo through him as he lies on the hospital bed, not including “I told you so”. No treatment worked and as the cancer spread from his lungs to his heart the doctor’s estimate of 2 weeks seemed to soak into me like a sponge. The wedding isle in that white church would never feel our shaking feet pounding against it. My little girl’s cries would never feel his thick warm arms to settle the pain. Christmas morning would never hear the moans we all exchanged as he made us wait to see our presents. Life from now would be a gaping hole; nothing would fill this void in me.
As he woke up from his 2nd nap of the day I hoped for him to talk, that for some reason today he would be able to speak and I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I have no remembrance of our last conversation we ever had. Maybe there was still a little fight left in this golfer, maybe this skinny and fragile 62 year old could spend one day with me. He could provide me with something a little more special then our nightly arguments in the kitchen or on the car ride to school, something more than the silent treatment that had filled my years at young 13. But that did not happen and I was forced to sit there speechless next to him, holding his hand as he thought about the mistakes he made in his past. Maybe regretting them or maybe even blaming me that I gave up on him a month after he turned 50. Either way he was leaving me and my ultimatum suddenly became clear to me, he had chosen the nicotine filled cigarettes. I guess they had always won all along. The thing that rises and kills had just become the champion as the monitors flickered in the gloomy hospital room.
A week or so after the nurses had rushed in I could be found at a cemetery wanting to hold my father’s hand. Wanting to crawl inside my 4 year old body and run into his welcoming leg as he jokingly tried to pull me off. I wanted to take off the black dress and change into my USC football gear and watch the game with him. I wanted to dance with him in the kitchen to the Christmas music coming from the family room. I wanted to be anywhere but the place I was now. I wanted to be with my dad and I wanted that to last forever. The only wish I’d ask for for the rest of my life, that the thing that rises and kills would have never won.