The fight is not over as long as there is life.
Μ.Ο., Family Member
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Anthem, Leonard Cohen
These lyrics from my father’s favourite song by Leonard Cohen, kept me awake outside the hospital room. My mind was stuck on one word: cancer. The same word that doctors uttered a few hours ago. My beloved was fighting against lung cancer. And I was fighting my demons, depression, anxiety, and denial. All in the face of losing someone so dear to me.
Μy dad went through constant rounds of chemotherapy. I accompanied him sometimes, fortifying our close bond. Walking up and down the neon-alighted corridor at the hospital became a routine. The doctors and the nursery assistants became close friends and the brochures with the ribbon of all colors a ritual of learning and studying. I never heard him complain once. His pain was as real to me as Rumpelstiltskin’s existence. Through all those moments, I soon realized that life is truly a constant fight that can only be faced with determination, courage, and dedication. Life is a fight, and it is not over until there is no life.
I took courage from him as he tried to be consistently available, and personally engaged in our family. Until now he refuses to be bed-bound in a hospital. “Death is the only thing we are assured will come. Why be so afraid of it and let your life pass you by?” he told me one day. I was tired of seeing myself in the mirror with swollen eyes, silent, and motionless. I had to bring my broken pieces together. Turn my pain into something meaningful. The universe must have heard me because I came across an article about a woman, Korina Pateli-Bell , who set up an NGO, FairLife, helping lung cancer patients after losing her husband from this refractory disease. I phoned 11157 support line and attend Breath program for the psychological support of caregivers. Then a door to a second family was opened, always available and supportive for my father and me.
“Breath” sessions changed our perception of cancer and fulfilled us with the motto “ life that leaves us breathless”. One day my father took my hand and whispered a line from his favorite song, “Keep ringing the bells that still can ring.” His words turned to a lifelong moral that follows me since: If I spend my time bemoaning the broken bells and disappointments, I’ll miss the music altogether.
My beloved father is winning the fights but that is not the case with the waging war. I mourn his fate and the fact that my role model and my paradigm in life will leave us, but that silent fighter marked me, and made me someone who is no longer afraid. Instead, I act so to make every single day of my life count. I know because he smiles, touches his wounds, and sings “that’s how the light gets in.”
23/1/2023