I wrote this on 1 April 2004, shortly after my father had first been diagnosed with cancer:

I have a hammer

I have a hammer. It is an old tool, the rubber cap on the end of the wooden handle is cracked and split from age. There are scratches in the claw head and a few scuffs in the handle from a half century of use. This hammer has been used to repair houses, to build sheds, to hang pictures, to do work. This hammer belonged to my grandfather, a man who took care of his tools with almost as much attention as he devoted to providing for his family. This hammer passed on to my father when my grandfather died after a three year battle with cancer that wasted him from a healthy man down to a thin frail ghost. He had smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes for 30 years, and the reaper came to collect his toll in the form of lung cancer. I was only seven at the time, and I did not understand why my grandfather spent all his time in bed.

The night my grandfather died was the only time I saw my father come close to crying. Both my parents came to get my brother and me from the neighbor’s house where we had been taken abruptly after a phone call during dinner. That night was the last time that my father ever carried me in his arms. When we came out of the house into the darkness, my father picked me up and spoke to me about how my grandfather, who my brother and I called Gran gran, had passed away. There was a quaver in his voice that I had never heard before and have not heard since. My father carried me over to our house while my mother carried my brother, who was four years younger than me. My brother was crying; he did not understand what was happening. His distress was from the change in routine rather than from any comprehension of what loss we had sustained.

My father inherited my grandfather’s tools and the responsibilities that came with being the head of a family in the South. He cared for the tools he inherited as well as he cared for the tools that he had bought with money earned from his own work. My father worked to earn everything in his life, and he worked even harder to give his children more than he ever had. My father has borne the burden of family responsibilities for years, and those responsibilities only increased when my uncle, my father’s brother, abandoned his family several years ago. That betrayal of family hurt my father almost as much as the death of his father.

When I became old enough to properly use tools, my father gave me the hammer my grandfather had passed down to him. I have used that hammer for 27 years. It is the only reminder I have of my grandfather.

Now, my life is turning upside-down. I’m in the midst of moving to another country for a three year expatriate assignment, and I get news that my father has cancer in his bladder.

I have a hammer. It is an old tool that belonged to my grandfather, who passed it down to my father, who gave it to me. I don’t want my father to suffer the same wasting death that my grandfather endured. I don’t want my father’s tools to pass down to me, not now.

My father never smoked cigarettes.

My father lived a very healthy life. Over and over again those health care professionals who worked on him would say that he looked more like a man 15 or 20 years younger than he was.

The reaper came anyway.

I now have my father’s hammer and the rest of his tools, along with his responsibilities.

I hope I can live up to the example he has left for me, a shining light guiding my life.

Technorati Tags: personal