Large family having Christmas dinner

Christmas Day With My Parents, And Other Life-Threatening Challenges

Christmas day this year was rather challenging, principally because my dad is dying. He’s 87 and got cancer 3 years ago. The 18 months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy probably saved his life, but now his bone marrow is fucked and he can’t make his own red blood cells, so he’s going to die. He knows it, I know it, everyone in the family knows it. We just don’t know when. I feel absolutely devastated.

Watching his steady decline is all the more painful because it brings up all the unmet needs I still have in my relationship with him, like security and significance, that I now know for sure he will never fulfil for me. I’ve realised this intellectually for a long time but seeing him slowly die real nails it home. My relationship with my dad has always lacked emotional intimacy despite my best efforts to connect with him over the years. He just didn’t have it in him. At the same time, he’s the one person I feel most confident in saying who genuinely loves me… and now he’s going to die. Fortunately, he’s not in any great pain as far as I can see… he just gets tired a lot.

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