A Window Opens by Egan Elisabeth

Author:Egan, Elisabeth [Egan, Elisabeth]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-08-25T05:00:00+00:00

17

When he had his first surgery, my dad had no idea that he was going to wake up without a voice. He knew he had a tumor in his throat, and he went into the hospital to have it removed before starting chemo. But the tumor turned out to be much bigger than expected, and it was wrapped around his larynx in such a way that everything around it had to come out. Immediately.

As Dr. Davis put it, “We found ourselves a little surprise, so we had to get a smidge more aggressive than we anticipated.”

This was the understatement of the century. My dad was never able to make noise again—no talking, laughing, whispering, humming, singing, or whistling. He had never been able to carry a tune, but he’d always been a big whistler. In what the hospital social worker cleverly referred to as the “new normal,” he also had to breathe through a hole in his neck.

I don’t remember who broke the news to him. I remember shiny yellow cinder-block walls in the recovery room. I remember aluminum chairs padded in turquoise and little packages of Keebler graham crackers stacked in a plastic basket on the windowsill.

When the weight of the news descended on my dad, he was ferociously angry in a red-faced way that would have been almost comical if it hadn’t been so scary and wildly out of character. This was our mild parent—the one who, when he’d had a voice, never raised it.

After the surgery, my dad threw his meal tray of clear liquids across the room and the little sealed cup of Jell-O exploded loudly against the wall. He gave a nurse the finger, and when the surgeon came into the room, he refused to open his eyes. We handed him a legal pad to write on—because, of course, he’d come to the hospital prepared to get some work done while recovering—and he scribbled one word with such conviction, it left an imprint on every sheet all the way to the back of the pad: “LIVID.”

I escaped to the hospital parking lot, where I leaned against a concrete construction barrier and cried so violently, I thought I might never stop. I was pregnant with Oliver, and this was the first time I felt him move.

The social worker said, “Your children will help your dad get through. When a door closes, a window opens.”

But I knew better. My dad wanted to make noise. He was a talker, an analyzer, a debater, both a collector and dispenser of knowledge. Babies weren’t his bag. Even as his daughter, I knew that I’d become more interesting to him as I’d gotten older and had more to talk about. At that moment, I would have traded the little butterfly of my own baby for one more conversation with my dad.

• • •

A few days after the laryngectomy, my dad handed the legal pad to my mom. (Dry erase was a relatively new invention and tricky for a left-hander to maneuver.) This time, the message said, “I need help and you can’t give it to me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.