Finally, she broke the silence. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time, Conrad, but I never could figure out how to say it. I think, now, this is the best way. Your father, Conrad, was also MY father.” She took a pensive breath and waited for me to blow up. When I did not, she exhaled slowly, clearly in relief. “THAT is why I never dated anyone after he… after he left. For all my life, he was the only man I ever knew and loved. I loved him from the moment I was born, I loved him when Mom passed away and I loved him when I came of age to know the touch of a man. For all my years, he was my father, my friend and my husband and he was ALWAYS there. Until he wasn’t.
“I thought about seeing other men, but realized that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. First, yes, there was you to consider, but not in the way that you might think. Your… OUR father loved us both very, very much and the short time that you got to spend with him was special. I didn’t want your memories of him to somehow be supplanted by new memories of some other man. And the memories I had with him were just as precious. I found that I had no interest in brining another man into my life. The one who made me and who’d also made you… he was man enough. And then there was you, in a whole other sense. As you grew older, you became the man in my life, son. Take another look at those pictures if you like, the ones where he and Mom are younger. You’ll see yourself in those pictures. You are like him in so, so many ways that, at times, it’s almost like he never left at all. You never knew him in the way that I did, son, but you know him in the way that you are, in the way that you live. He shines out through your eyes and actions on a daily basis. So… in a way, he never really left us. So why would I even need or want another man, when I had him… and then you?”
I let that sink in for a moment and then finally found my voice. “How… how did it begin?” I asked.
Mother closed her eyes in concentration. She didn’t speak for several seconds and then it all rattled out of her. “When I was just getting into my teens, Mother started getting sick. It wasn’t like your normal illness, either. She began feeling weak and drained, like just a few hours of being awake for everyone else was like being awake for days on end for her. She couldn’t lift as much, move as fast or think as clearly. Everything about her was… slowing down, I guess. Father and I didn’t know what to make of it until she started having fainting spells. She’d be standing up, talking to us about one thing or another, and suddenly she’d just collapse in a heap. Father took her to the hospital in town for a few days of testing. I was here, all alone for those few days, not knowing what was happening. When they returned, they finally had an answer for what was wrong. It was cancer.
“You have to understand, back then, it was the 60’s. In those days, cancer was a dirty word. No one spoke it, like just saying the word would somehow inflict you with it, like the very mention of cancer would strike a loved one down. People died from it left and right. Doctors knew what it was, but they had no clue how to treat it, let alone fight it. It was like that new virus they’re talking about in Africa, the one that caused that scare in Reston, Virginia last year. Ebola. The going theory was that being diagnosed with cancer was a death sentence. Out of thousands, only a handful survived, and no one knew how or why. Frankly, it scared the hell out of everyone. When Mom and Dad came back with the news, it was like all of the life and laughter and happiness in our home had been replaced by everything cancer-related in a matter of days. Pain. Doubt. Fear. Those took up residence here while all the good things seemed to have gone on vacation.
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