I was my father’s son his lacking was my lacking.īetween 20, my personal life bottomed out, the result of a yearslong downward spiral that went unattended. What frustrated me most, though, was knowing I could describe myself in the same terms. I saw my dad only as stubborn, non-communicative, prone to anger. And so, for many years, I shined a light on his flaws rather than his strengths.
The path toward adulthood is paved with the remains of deconstructed idols. The amputation worked to fortify the myth surrounding my dad but, over time, my reverence waned. The humor came in many forms, most notably when he performed a handstand in a swimming pool and wagged his stump in the air. The power is memorialized in my mind as a vivid image of him cutting our front lawn on one leg, pushing the mower forward and hopping up to it before pushing again. Undeterred, he moved on with silent power and humor. When the stitches were removed, one was left embedded in his skin, which resulted in a dime-sized hole that made it impossible for my dad to get fitted for a prosthetic. The options at that point were another surgery or amputation, which offered better odds that all the dirty little cells would be expunged. Knowing this time that it was malignant, doctors again removed the mass, but they were uncertain whether it would return. Doctors scraped the mass out his foot and all was well until his early 40s when it returned. The cancer first arrived 25 years earlier and was misdiagnosed as a mere growth.
In May 1998, doctors amputated my dad’s right leg below the knee to eradicate a rare cancer growing in the heel of his foot. This was the case in good and bad times, when life was fair and when it inevitably brought strife. There was but one narrative in the minds of his two young sons, and it revolved around a persona that was larger than life, mysterious and capable of the impossible. My dad began as a character of mythic proportions.
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