The first thing you need to know is that I suffer from a chronic pain conditions and it kills my dad and the rest of my family. It's one of those things where I'm forced to be in pain all of the time and there is nothing he can do. He just has to watch and as a daddy, he'd rather be saving the day and making me better.
Because of this condition, I'm stuck going through various unpleasant treatments now and then to relieve my pain- some of these work for me, and some simply don't help at all. When this story takes place, I was at a particularly horrible moment where the pain was utterly excruciating and the treatment the doctors had me doing was making me sicker and sicker by the minute. I was not even able to get up off the floor before throwing up again and again, couldn't sleep yet wanted to, and I was confused which made me extremely emotional and I was crying a lot just from all the un-fun things happening at once.
Because I couldn't stand without getting sick, I was spending the time between my vomits laying in the floor in various locations around my house (sometimes when you're sick, you do things like this that don't make any sense). I was laying in the hallway on the floor crying and just being plain miserable and my dad was a room away in the living room sitting in his chair watching tv. He paused the show and he said to me, "Man, I'm so sorry, sis" and I mumble something in return like "Not your fault." He turned on the volume again.
Not one full minute passed before he muted the show again and called out "H, what do we need to do? How can I help you?" and I thought for only a second before telling him "There's nothing at all that anyone can do." and I believed it. He once again turned up his tv show to hear it.
This time it was less than 20 seconds before my daddy turned off the television completely and got up out of his chair. He walked quietly across the living room and into the hallway entrance. He got down on his knees, then his hands, then he lay down on the floor. He ran his fingers through my hair and said a prayer for me out loud. This wasn't the preacher kind of prayer that I hear him give all the time- he IS a preacher, you know. This one was, instead a broken-hearted dad who just wanted someone to make his little girl feel better. I don't know what he said exactly, but I remember realizing that I had been wrong when I told him that nobody could do anything to make it better. He found a way.
He stayed there for a few minutes playing with my hair and singing old church songs to me. I didn't want to move, but after a too-short amount of time I whispered that I had to go get sick again. He had a tear in his eye and he said "That's okay, sweetie. I'll wait here and you can come right back. I love you."
It made me feel guilty that even though he was trying, and even though he wanted so badly for me to be better, I had to leave the sweetest moment of my entire life to go do the thing he wanted least for me- be sick. I know, of course, this wasn't actually my fault and that guilt over that is a silly thing.
I'll never ever forget that night. I was 17 and had Kansas City Chiefs pajamas on when I realized there was nobody in the whole entire world who would ever love me near as much as my daddy does.
Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there- especially mine.
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