Oh Dad, we would have been such friends

I can still hear the tremor in Mum’s voice. It should have been like any other Skype catch up. Mum and Dad asking after my new friends, laughing at my stories of nights out in a foreign city and smiling with pride as I’d boastfully update them on my latest grades. But this call was different. It changed everything.

“We don’t want to worry you, sweetie, but, ah, Dad’s had some abnormal blood tests.”

“Huh?” From under the covers of my university bed, I sat up.

“The doctors are concerned. They’ve found a tumour. They want to act quickly. He’s booked in for surgery next week.”

I had been on university exchange in Wales (from Sydney) for six months. Not even two weeks prior, my whole family — including my Dad — had been over to visit. We’d spent Christmas together, and I showed them around town. We’d laughed and adventured. We did strenuous hikes and, like always, we’d left the lugging of all our bags to Dad. When we hugged farewell at the end of the trip, I had no idea that would be his last.

Cancer is unthinkably cruel. For Dad, it was five months from diagnosis to death: Five traumatically short months. He was 54, I was 21. It caught us completely off guard. Dad was a triathlete, ate well, moderated his booze, prioritised sleep, loved deeply, had a good career and was a man of faith.

But cancer doesn’t discriminate, and for literally no other reason than bad luck, it entirely took over my father’s body. But it did not beat his character. When Dad’s body began shutting down, when he lost the ability to walk, when the nurses told him he’d never step outside his hospital room again — he did not want to wallow. Instead, he wanted to talk; to squeeze a lifetime of conversations into the few precious moments we had left.

From his hospital bed, he wanted to discuss my dreams, ambitions and passions. He wanted to chat through my values and offer frameworks for leading a good life. He wanted to make sure I’d look out for Mum. He wanted to make me laugh and smile, and above all, he wanted to make sure there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind that he’d die the proudest father possible.