I Can Only Imagine Page 6

  Four

  NEW LEASE ON LIFE

  Oh Lord have mercy on this weary soul,

  Come and take me to the river and make me whole,

  It’s down with the old and up with the new,

  The hard reset, my life, take two.

  —MERCYME, “NEW LEASE ON LIFE,” FROM WELCOME TO THE NEW (2014)*

  One night when I was a freshman in high school, Dad was having dinner at his favorite diner in Greenville, the Royal Drive-in, when he started feeling ill. He had severe abdominal pain, and his speech became slurred. He wasn’t making sense to the waitress, so she knew something was wrong and called for an ambulance.

  The emergency room doctor ordered a round of tests to discern a diagnosis. When Dad’s lab and blood work results came back, the doctor quickly saw he had very low blood sugar and diagnosed him with diabetes. Believing that was the sole source of the pain, the doctor released him with medications and instructions for managing his newly discovered disease. (It’s important to note that while Dad was a tall man, by this point in his life he weighed well in excess of three hundred pounds.)

  But his condition didn’t get better. In fact, it started getting worse. Mammaw Millard and I noticed his skin was very yellow. Even his eyes looked yellow. Realizing he was severely jaundiced, he went back to the hospital. As the diabetes treatments appeared not to be working, the doctors feared that something else could be wrong, something much worse. They ran more extensive tests but were not satisfied with the findings. They informed us that they wanted to perform exploratory surgery. Reluctantly, Dad agreed.

  About four hours into the surgery, a doctor came out and told us Dad had pancreatic cancer. We were in shock. He then said they were trying to find exactly where on his pancreas the cancer was located. If it was on one specific area of the organ, that would indicate he had only months to live. If it was in another spot, he could have several years left. When the doctor returned to the operating room, we sat in the waiting area praying that he didn’t have the “bad” cancer but the “good” cancer.

  After another four hours passed, the doctor told us they had found all the cancer on the side they had hoped for—that Dad should have a few more years to live. That was such a surreal moment. On one hand we were devastated that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but on the other, we were grateful that we had longer than just a few months left with him. (As it turned out, there were many more times in this journey that we had to choose between the bad and the worse viewpoints.)

  The day following the surgery, when Dad was fully awake and alert, his doctor delivered the news of what they had found. He told Dad that he had pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive and brutal types. He went on to explain that the reason he had contracted diabetes and was jaundiced was because the cancer had spread to his liver. The doctor told Dad that, with proper care and treatment, he had, at best, seven to ten years to live. Of course, with cancer, there are no guarantees.

  Isn’t it interesting? We all understand we are going to die. None of us know how long we have. But as soon as a medical professional puts a number to our remaining days, it completely changes our perspectives of both death and life. That was certainly the case with my dad. When he received the cancer diagnosis, Dad was just forty-four years old. I was fifteen.

  Mammaw Millard took the news very hard. Her ex-husband, my grandfather, was only in his early forties when he died of cancer. Even though they had been divorced for quite a while—not by her choice—she still loved him. Now she felt as though her nightmare was happening all over again, as her son had now received the same news in almost exactly the same year of his life.

  That day, as soon as school was out, I went straight to the hospital. When we talked about the cancer, Dad didn’t cry, even though they told me that he had after getting the news that morning. I saw and heard a noticeable change in his face and in his voice as he spoke. I saw what could only be described as a humility I had never seen him express.

  Some might say I had every right to think Dad was receiving some kind of what-goes-around-comes-around, reap-what-you-sow cosmic justice. They might think I might even be relieved or somehow glad that this was happening to the man who had been such a monster to me in both the violence and the silence for so many years. And it’s true that many days I had wished God would take this man out of my life because of the pain he had caused me. But now I was praying he might be saved—simply because he was my dad.

  Reality and Repentance

  All I could think about was that a doctor had handed my dad a death sentence. Regardless of the painful past, he had been my only available parent since the third grade. For better or for worse, he was still my father. He was this big, strong man’s man, and I had believed nothing or no one could ever take him down—yet I had been told that something was going to do just that.

  I looked at Dad lying in that hospital bed and thought about what must be running through his mind and heart. I felt horrible for him. Something new was happening inside me: the anger in my heart was moving aside and making room for compassion. Sympathy welled up in me, along with my tears.

  Rusty, my youth pastor, came to the hospital. We found a quiet spot, and he sat with me while I let the dam break and all my emotions pour out. Any setting where I could open up with Rusty to talk one-on-one always created a safe place for me—one of only a few in my life.

  I always knew my dad was physically strong, but in the days that followed, a different strength emerged in him. When Dad went to church before, it had been for social reasons: he wanted to be around other singles and have a group to spend time with. Now going to church was completely about the Lord, not the ladies. He also became gentler, more compassionate. The bottom line? Somehow, my dad was changing for the better.

  It was as though whatever had happened to his mind years ago when he woke up after the truck accident had started to reverse when he woke up from the exploratory surgery. Years before, something had gone very wrong. Now—through a cancer diagnosis, of all things—something was finally going in the right direction for Dad . . . and for me.

  An old saying goes, “The storms of life make you either better or bitter.” I guess Dad decided he had had enough of bitter and wanted to try better this time. We have all heard about angry, resentful people who get bad news that sends them even deeper into a chasm of disillusionment and disgust with life. But Dad started climbing out of the pit he had been in for so many years. Or maybe Someone was lifting him out, and his heart was finally opening. Maybe he hit the proverbial bottom, looked up, and asked God for help.

  For as long as I could remember, Dad’s anger and pride had always gotten the best of him. He could never admit he was wrong. Now the anger began showing up less, the pride took a back seat to a new humility, and he began leaving room for others, including me, to have something to say.

  I made a decision, even at that young age, that I had to stop being afraid of my dad. I knew I had to step outside of what had been and start to see him as a hurting and suffering human being. I had to care about him in a completely different way. I was forced to grow up really fast when Mom left us; now I was forced again to go to another level—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

  I took on more of a caretaker role in looking out for Dad, and, miraculously, that cleared the way for him to be more involved in my life. Our new common enemy of cancer moved us toward each other, to stand back-to-back and battle the disease together instead of going toe-to-toe, with me constantly trying to defend myself.

  Things were changing. When I checked on him at night to turn off his light, I would see his open Bible in his hands; he had fallen asleep reading it. We also started spending more time together. Dad tried to exercise to improve his quality of life, so we walked on the local track, which gave us time to talk. We had always watched sports, especially football, on TV together; now we also watched comedies. We would laugh together, which we had never done before. I even got to the point of staying ho
me with him instead of going out in the evenings.

  For the first time in my life, we were choosing to be together.

  The Pickup Project

  Dad owned a 1963 Chevy pickup that had sat in the driveway for years. It was a hunter-green, short-bed, step-side model with a column-shift, three-on-the-tree transmission and the obligatory gun rack in the back window. (Very Texas.) For good reason, Dad didn’t own a gun, so he kept an umbrella hanging across the arms on the rack.

  When I was a kid, the truck was drivable but needed work. Dad didn’t have the money to fix it up, so, eventually, the truck wouldn’t run. Knowing we were on borrowed time, he wanted to get it back into operation while he was still physically able. He also saw it as an opportunity for us to have a project to do together. But I was still struggling with my conflicted feelings between the past and present, so I wasn’t totally on board with the idea.

  I think Dad wanted to make positive memories with me and maybe leave me with a cool classic truck to drive after he was gone. But I ruined that by not letting go of my pride.

  The battle came to a head one day when we were standing at the truck and I was refusing to work on it with him. He got angry, picked up the spare tire, and tried to throw it as hard as he could across the driveway. For many years that feat would not have been hard at all for Dad, but with the cancer now sapping his strength, he was just too weak. As he dropped the tire, he lost his balance and fell down.

  Frustrated, I walked over and easily picked up the tire with one hand. Dad just lay there, staring up at me, and in desperation said, “Go ahead, son, you know you’ve always wanted to do it. Take your shot. Here I am. Hit me with it.” I paused, turned away, and put the tire back in the truck bed without saying a word.

  Of course, while I had thought plenty of times about taking some kind of revenge, those days were long over. I wasn’t about to physically hurt him now. But I realized my words and attitude were doing plenty of damage, just as his had done to me. I sensed a deep conviction that I had to find the strength to change how I felt.

  I once heard a pastor say that when it comes to the sins of our fathers, we either repeat or repent. Dad was repenting, and I needed to make my choice too.

  Dad had always told Stephen and me that if he could ever lose enough weight to meet his goal, he was going to trade in that old truck for a brand-new one. Unfortunately, the cancer eventually caused him to hit the goal, but Dad decided that, regardless of the reason, he was going to keep his word. So Dad decided that instead of us trying to repair the old one, he would replace the old classic clunker with a newer model.

  The new truck also had a manual transmission, which I had not yet learned to drive. When Dad had to be in the hospital for several days, I got inside, pulled out onto the access road in front of our house, and ground those gears good until I figured out how to shift and drive it.

  When he was released from the hospital, I surprised him by driving up in the new truck. Dad smiled the entire way home. He was pleased to see that I had taught myself how to drive a manual transmission.

  The pickup trucks became a metaphor for our relationship. We had to give up the old, broken-down life for a new start to get where we needed to go together. And just as I learned to drive that truck, I was about to be challenged to learn a great deal more.

  The Great Soupspoon Heist

  Before his diagnosis, Dad would never have been playful in public, pulled any kind of prank, or done anything to make us laugh together. But one memory I have of how much Dad was changing stands out to me.

  For some reason, he really liked the soupspoons from Royal Drive-in, his favorite eatery, and he could never find any like them in the local stores. The manager wouldn’t sell him any, either, so he decided he was going to steal as many of them as he could each time he came to eat until he could get an entire set of his own.

  He would ask the waitress, “Oh, by the way, can I get another soupspoon?” and while she was distracted, he would stick them, one by one, down into the shafts of his cowboy boots. By the time we were ready to leave, he had several spoons stuffed in them. Every step he took, Dad jingled as though he had on spurs or bells or something. He walked as softly as he could, shuffling out of the diner, but we always laughed for a long time when we got outside. By the time we’d eaten several meals there—Dad always ordering soup—he finally got his coveted, albeit stolen, set of diner soupspoons.

  Eventually, Dad got worse and was mostly bedridden. Word had gotten around town about his decline, and one evening the owner of the Royal Drive-in came to the house. Dad hadn’t been able to eat there in a while, so I thought, Uh, oh. They heard about Dad stealing the spoons, and the jig is up. He’s so busted. Well, yes and no. The waitresses figured out what Dad was doing, and they thought it was funny to watch him sneak their soupspoons out in his boots. While I was sitting in the booth with Dad, trying to hide my laughter, the waitresses were evidently in the kitchen, laughing too. Like everyone else, they heard him jingling as he walked out the door. They started putting their scratched and bent spoons in a box labeled “For Bub,” knowing they were going to get rid of them anyway. They thought, Why not let Arthur get rid of the old spoons for us, since he obviously wants them so badly?

  Now, appreciating the regular customer Dad had been and knowing that soon he would no longer be well enough to come in, the owner brought him a brand-new set of those soupspoons, still in the box! Dad was a little embarrassed but very touched at the same time. That gift was a great example of what the community thought about Bub.

  The False-Alarm Confessional

  Following Dad’s diagnosis when I was a freshman in high school, the doctor had described the kind of symptoms that would signal to us that the end was near. One night during the first year of his illness, I came home and found him lying on the bathroom floor, throwing up. He was wrapped in a blanket, shaking from severe chills. I hadn’t been gone very long, so him being that ill so quickly scared me.

  As soon as he saw me, he started to cry. “Bart,” he said, “you know I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’m so sorry for not telling you. I wish I hadn’t messed up with your mom. Please take care of Mammaw.”

  He thought that this was the beginning of the end, so he was telling me everything he wanted me to know, as fast as he could. Dad continued sharing his heart while we waited for an ambulance. I just listened.

  Just as he began to say all the things he would miss in Stephen’s and my lives after he was gone, the oncoming sound of the sirens interrupted him. I had teared up when he talked about his absence, but the bright lights of the ambulance piercing through the windows as the paramedics pulled up to the house caused me to quickly dry my eyes.

  After running a gamut of tests, the emergency room doctor announced, “Well, Arthur, these aren’t symptoms from the cancer. You actually just have the flu.”

  It was a quiet ride home as we both replayed all that Dad had said that night. Thinking he was dying, he had shared with me what he thought were his last words. Believing that the end was close had made him become very honest about his life and where he was with those he loved. That night started him on the journey of opening up his heart.

  After that, Dad made an effort to never miss any event I was involved in at school or church. But he also started going to things he never would have considered attending before, like parent meetings at church. He was sticking to the changes. Unless he was just too weak or sick from his symptoms or the chemo, he was there. Dad was committed.

  After I got my driver’s license, I started leaving the house more. Dating, hanging out with friends, and my social life took priority, as happens with most normal teenagers. But, of course, my home life had never been normal, and it certainly still wasn’t.

  Through the ups and downs of his disease, I kept seeing signs that God was most certainly at work in Dad. One night, when I came in to check on him after he had fallen asleep, his Bible was lying there, open as always. But this time I noticed he
had been writing all kinds of notes in the margins. Throughout the entire Bible were countless scribbled observations and remarks.

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t realize how much he was not just reading but studying the Scriptures. The apostle Paul speaks of how the Word of God brings about transformation of the mind. In that moment, I realized that God was literally changing Dad’s mind.

  Over time, we started to talk more and more the way a father and son are supposed to. Because his words were now seasoned with God’s Word, I started getting a sense of responsibility as to who I needed to become spiritually, as a Christian. Dad instilled in me that my calling was bigger than just singing. My identity was not in my voice but in Christ. I was a child of God who sang, not a singer who happened to be a Christian. (It would take me years to truly grasp that one.) He knew my gift had a higher purpose.

  Dad said he believed that even his illness was a part of God’s plan, and he wanted it to be used for His glory. For a human with terminal cancer to make that statement, something deep and profound has to be going on in the heart and soul. Something not of this world.

  A consistent theme threaded throughout Dad’s constant advice was for me to do what he felt he hadn’t done. His focus was for me to avoid becoming who Dad had been. But God was taking us both to a new destination—together.

  Dad had a lot of false alarms as the cancer slowly consumed him. I’d find him unresponsive and call the ambulance once again. He’d go to the hospital, and I’d wonder if this might be it. But then he would bounce back, and sometimes he could even go back to work at the highway department. After the accident, he had gone into the surveying department, mapping out new locations and paths for road construction. By this point, Dad was overseeing a crew from an office and didn’t always have to go out on-site.

  Between work, home, and the hospital, Dad was in and out of the house, and so my life was a roller coaster during my high school years. When most of my friends were focused on having fun on the weekend and dreaming of the amazing adventures they would embark upon after graduation, I was dealing with the emotional battle of Dad’s impending death and figuring out what I could do to help with the constant regimen of his treatment.