I had written this entry about not having my Dad anymore a few days ago. It was so charged with emotion, I just never finished it. When emotions are all strong like that I need to take a break and calm down. Some people might say I need to release them, but it’s just this like angry fireball that doesn’t allow me to consider what I’m feeling.

Either way, some things recently have been harder without my Dad. The big one I had been writing about was graduation. My dad had a very zen like attitude about the pancreatic cancer and the ever shortening time he had left… but something that we all were upset about was the fact that he wouldn’t be at graduation. In medicine, you really learn that there are all sorts of possibilities, but it’s usually the middle road that end up happening. So at first when I learned that my Dad had metastatic lesions (the pancreatic cancer that had spread) in his liver, it didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t make it to graduation. It made it less likely than if he just had cancer that hadn’t spread, but didn’t necessarily rule it out. Then he had all this bleeding and was getting transfusions left and right from the tumor(s) and it was almost certain he would not make it to graduation.

I sure you can imagine him not being there was hard. I don’t like to make things a “you have to be in my shoes to know” but there’s something about not having someone like your parent at something so huge like a medical school graduation that you’ve been working years towards that is really, really difficult. It’s also hard to get some of those pitying looks, I’m a strong girl. I don’t need pity, I just want my Dad back for one more day of my life but some things aren’t meant to be.

There’s a coldplay song 42 with a line “Those who are dead are not dead / They’re just living in my head” I first heard this before any of the stuff with my Dad and thought it was an odd lyric. But then I heard it when my Dad was sick and it struck a chord that this is where my Dad would continue to be when he wasn’t here anymore. So I know my Dad wasn’t there on graduation, but I still have an idea of what he would say and his big smile! And that’s what I’ll continue to have for other moments of my life.

This father’s day I don’t have some silly card to give him, or some present. Maybe this year I could have gotten away from graduation from medical school as my present! joking :) I miss him a lot though, wish he could be there that first day I put my long coat on it with Dr. Goofy Girl, the first one in my family. Just not meant to be and I’ll just imagine his calling me an onesan – literally a big sister, but more meant as a grown up. And of course making that silly noise that Japanese people do when they are amazed – oooo! :)