O n a cloudy Monday morning in March 2003, my father came into my room to check on me. I felt him pull the blankets up around my neck – something he used to do when I was a child. He lingered for a moment, then quietly left the room.
That was the last glimpse I ever had of him. On that day he took his own life. He had been suffering from sinus cancer for the last four months.
A marble-sized tumour was found wedged inside his nasal passage after he began having unexplained nosebleeds in late 2002. He had surgery to remove the tumour and even though it was a success, I could see the huge physical, mental and emotional toll treatment was taking on him. His death was a huge shock.
We desperately searched for answers. The only explanation the doctors could give us was that my dad’s frontal lobe was significantly damaged from the radiation treatment he was receiving, which could have led to changes in his personality and behaviour. I was devastated.
For more than two decades, my father had sat by my bedside through every single one of my hospital stays. I was born with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a rare genetic bone and muscular disorder. I had my first surgery, to turn my legs and feet around, when I was just ten weeks old, and had various procedures throughout the years.
My disability shaped my childhood, but my father’s suicide and its aftermath is what has informed so much of my identity as an adult. I was 21 when he died, that in-between age where you’re too old to be a .