Fuck Cancer.

When I was a little girl, my dad was my partner in crime.

We spent our time fishing and wrestling, playing in the yard and eating junk food.

He has the gentlest soul you'll ever encounter. He's got the spirit of a grandpa, and he's always had it. 30 or 50, he's just so gentle.

When my parents divorced my world crashed down around me.

My dad was my best friend, I didn't understand how I could live without him.

I did though. I lived without him for 10 years. I lived with a lot of hurt and a lot of sadness. I grew up needing him so much, and he just wasn't there.

He remarried a few times, he spent some time in jail, he checked out and stayed stoned for a lot of years.

Eventually he cleaned himself up, I made contact with him and tried to build a relationship... and it worked. We got really close, and when I decided to go to college closer to him, I was able to start really learning about my dad.

He had cancer really bad. The chemo & radiation made him look slightly frail. Well over 6ft tall and at nearly 300 lbs, he still towered over me but he just felt different. He felt worried. The tumor in his liver was big, and it wasn't shrinking. He was sick but worked hard anyway, always struggling to make ends meet. I don't remember when he started his "crazy" juice diet, or the supplements, or the positive thinking, but the combination of it all just worked. The tumor disappeared. Remission.

My dad was able to change my daughter's diaper the day we brought her home from the hospital. This summer, my little sister moved in with him. She spent the summer before college building the relationship she never had with him.

My dad starts chemo again very soon. My mom called and told me yesterday. All of her words jumbled, because deep down it doesn't matter how small the tumor was, how much of it they removed, or how positive the doctor was. My dad is sick again, and I am absolutely torn up over it.

Fuck cancer. Fuck it completely.