HappyPlatypus's Journal

When I think of my father, I invariably think of his hands. They are thick and rough, with short, powerful fingers with the strength of pillars. They are carpenter's hands, the worn and weathered hands of a tradesman who has earned his keep for nearly eighty years with them.

But they are also artisan's hands. Dad's a woodcarver and a painter. Even though macular degeneration has taken his eyesight, he just made me a wooden cane by hand with a gorgeous mahogany shaft and buffalo horn handle. On the wall above me as I type this are half a dozen relief carvings of castles and lighthouses and even a tribute to the fallen of 9-11. 

All carved so intricately by Dad's worn but powerful hands.

My hands? Not so much.

I have the hands of a pianist. I'll show them to you sometime. I've got them around here somewhere. I usually keep them in a box under my bed.

Kidding. But my hands are nothing like my father's. Mine are long and soft, the hands of a writer. I have slender, elfin fingers, all the better to type with, I suppose.

I'm thinking about hands because I got bad news today. Dad learned from his oncologist that he has late-stage pancreatic cancer, something his mother and her four siblings all died of. My sister told me the news. She got a two-line e-mail from my mother at 2:56 p.m., right after our parents got back from the hospital. Their phone has been off the hook ever since. I assume Mom's too distraught to talk.

I read a column once by a middle-aged writer whose sole surviving parent had just died. The writer lamented that he or she felt like an orphan, and suddenly now, at 39, I begin to understand.

I'm not ready. I'm not ready for my dad to die. There's too much I don't know yet! There's too much I can't do yet! I can't change the oil in my car. I can't build a house. I can't fix the plumbing. I can't troubleshoot appliance malfunctions.

That's what DAD does! That's what a father's supposed to do, and he's ALWAYS supposed to be there, with his hands, his arms and his strength. Dad could always lift anything and everything. I remember once seeing him carry a 75-horse outboard motor all by himself across about three acres from one boat to another.

But me? My wife's now facing life in a wheelchair. My mother is facing life without my father. I can't feel my feet. How can I carry all of that? How can I shoulder with my pianist's slender fingers the manly load my father carried with no problem?

And as my father faces death, how do I make things easier for him? How do I let him know that he can pass his burdens from those burly hands to my slender ones, that everything will be OK? That HE will be OK? That I will take care of Mom in his absence?

I remember when we buried my grandfather. Other than the funeral director and his wife and the two grave diggers, Dad and I were the only mourners. Mom had to stay at our small mom-and-pop resort to run it in our absence.

Dad and I slid Grandpa's coffin from the hearse and started to carry it to the grave, but it was too much for just the two of us. I was only 20, and it was a bit much for me. Grandpa, even at 80, was a big man. The grave diggers pitched in after I stumbled and nearly pitched Grandpa end-over-end, which I'm given to understand Just. Isn't. Done. Tradition is so cloying, I swear.

I'm happy to report we got Grandpa to his grave safely enclosed in his coffin, thanks to the help of the kindly grave diggers. And Dad didn't seem to mind that I wasn't able to hold up my end of the coffin. Dad remained stoic, if somewhat red-eyed, through the short service, but he nearly broke down at the end. I reached to hug him, and he turned away, shrugging me off.

On one hand, it surprised me. Dad had never minded me showing emotion. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of falling down and cutting my knee something fierce. Channeling the thespian who would go to college on an acting scholarship 14 years later, I screamed in probably more agony than I felt, and Dad burst from the house to carry me into the bathroom, talking to me in soothing tones. With a deft and gentle touch, his rough hands cleaned my bleeding wound, stopped the flow of blood, applied Bactine and then a bandage. He was as kind and gentle as Mom or Grandma. I remember, even at the age of 4, being genuinely startled and moved that someone as tough and strong as Dad could be so nurturing and loving.

So it surprised me a little when Dad withdrew from me at Grandpa's funeral. Then again, Dad was born in 1932, so he was raised in a time when it was not cool for men to show emotions. So I wasn't too surprisedl. I backed away from my proffered hug.

Later, at Pizza Hut, Dad opened up about his childhood with Grandpa and told stories I had never heard for a couple hours about growing up.

Dad isn't my biological father, but he's the only father I've ever known and the only one I'd ever care to. Mom met him when I was only six or seven months old. Their first date was a picnic, and apparently I celebrated by peeing on him. He married her anyway.

And thirty nine years later, doctors told him today he's going to die.

I don't know what to do.