Kimkat - aged 13

I have a sickening feeling that our parents aren't telling us everything that they know, and I have to wonder if they've been told how long my dad has left to live.

For as long as I can remember, my father has been seriously ill. He had a heart attack and a kidney transplant when I was younger, suffers from Diabetes and Anaemia among other things and takes enough tablets per day to make any normal person sick by just looking at them. He has several skin cancers on his body and about a year ago had one on his tongue too. To top it all off, he's recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. Unfortunately, my mum is no better off. She had breast cancer when I was about seven, although I have to admit that I can't really remember much from the time. My parents never told me much (I guess they though I was too young to understand) and I can't even remember visiting her in hospital. But she did survive that, only to be diagnosed with bone cancer not three months ago.

In any other circumstance, I would probably be proud to report that I haven't cried once since the first bad news came six months ago (back then, the doctors thought the bone cancer was sciatica), but in this case it just scares me to death. It makes me feel rather guilty, to be honest, but I feel the need to stay strong because my parents quite simply don't need anything else to worry about. My sister and I help out around the house a lot, and my eldest sister visits once every three weeks rather than once or twice a year like it used to be - it's weird to think that there's an advantage to all of this, but it's nice none-the-less. I have a sickening feeling that our parents aren't telling us everything that they know, and I have to wonder if they've been told how long my dad has left to live. As sad as it is, I figure he won't be alive this time next year. I'm not sure I've fully registered this fact yet, and I'm not sure how I feel about anything that's happened so far. But, I have a brilliant thought that gets me through the day, and I thought it might instil some sort of confidence into every other person out there in a similar situation. Whether it does or not is a different matter, but I'm going to write about it anyway.

About two years ago, during a particularly difficult period with dad, my mum, my sister and I were all having a discussion about dad, and mum said off hand that she doubted very much that dad would be alive to see my thirteenth birthday. Nobody brought it up again, and I think they both forgot all about it. I never did. At the age of eleven, I figured that my thirteenth birthday was a long way off, and refused to think about the implications of mum's statement. My twelfth rolled around, however, and I began to fear my next birthday. I didn't sleep well in the months leading up to it, and I didn't sleep at all the night before my thirteenth. That morning, I saw the sunrise from the wrong side, and cursed it. It's a funny image that springs to mind, now, but I actually hung out of my window at five o' clock in the morning and scowled at the sunrise. I thought my father was going to die that day. As you may have guessed, it is now many months passed my thirteenth birthday, and I am actually looking forward to my fourteenth in a few months.

My mum was wrong, and my dad was alive several months after my thirteenth to be diagnosed with lung cancer. It's kind of ironic, when put like that. I haven't told any of my friends about dad, and I wonder just how many of them know that bone cancer isn't curable. My mum will be dead in about five years (this we were told, though she swears blind that she'll be alive to see her grandchildren) and yet I hardly ever talk to anyone about it, no matter how much they want me to. This is my message to the world, after careful consideration and many hopeful experiences. My parents are alive. I am happy.

Page updated 18 July 2012