The Night Father Died

photocredit; Anirbahn Acharia photography

It would have been a crisp serene night. I would have sat by my bedroom window and listened to crickets chirp in the surrounding bushes or the towncrier drumming his gong in the still night. It would have been like every other night but that night my father's screams pierced the night. His wails resonated in the walls and in our hearts. I was not sitting by the window, i was quivering under the covers, trodden with fear. My mother's soft sobs accompanied my father's wails and my siblings were gathered about him.
There were days before this, when i would stay back at school and not return home for the holidays, because i couldn't bare to see my Father. A once towering intimidating man reduced to an inanimate existence, seating in his chair all day staring at nothing. Like living tissue without a soul. Shrivelled up and dry, being eaten alive by a disease that festered and progressed daily.
They said there was a cure. My family pumped everything into procuring treatment. A treatment that took a little more of him every day. A treatment that reaped from him and at the same time kept the disease in check. Funny, they called it a cure.
He battled with this disease three years before it finally took him. Three years taking the so-called cure. In his last days, he suffered delirium and hysteria. He could see things that weren't there and couldn't remember the names of his own children but before he died he held his last born tightly in his arms, before his lungs collapsed and he could breath no more.
This is how Cancer reaps the joys of families and cripples your loved ones. This is why you should worry about the decisions and lifestyle habits you procure today and consequences it forebodes in the future. Death by Cancer is not a peaceful death, neither is it painless. It eats you from the inside out and even the present cure harms you from within. Live Wise. Live Right and you will Live Long.