Chapter Nine: A Father’s Worst Fear

On September 22, 2000, my ex-wife Pam took Taylor to the emergency room after she fainted in a shower at Pam’s house. Her mother’s intuition kicked in and I was glad of it for what was about to begin. The following day, Taylor began a diary of her experiences.

I realized, when I reread her first entry from that life-altering night when the brain tumor was discovered, that Taylor culled her diaries and used portions of her journals when she delivered a speech at the Swan Hotel in Disneyworld at the American Cancer Society Convention two days before the terrorist attack on the United States of America.

On the afternoon of the 23rd, Taylor returned to my house and told me what had happened. Our world, as we had known it, had suddenly changed. She would later write that the light seemed to go out of my eyes at the moment when she told me she had a brain tumor. I don’t recall that. I recall being stunned, as if someone had sucker-punched me in the stomach. There are so many moments that I wish I was able to relive, because the shock of the moment was so devastating it seemed to wipe out some of the images, like photographic film being exposed to a blinding light. I remember saying to Taylor, “You can beat this,” with a voice that tried for authority, but I’m sure rang hollow with doubt and fear. She was certainly frightened. I was terrified. Was the brain tumor benign or malignant? That was the question. The tumor in her head was the size of a peach. I remember trying to shake the image of a peach out of my mind. Why couldn’t it have been the size of a cherry? Or a pea? Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so terrified. A peach seemed so big to me. A few days later, a day before Taylor’s scheduled surgery, Taylor wrote in her journal.

The past few days have been a whirlwind. It’s like a haze has come over me. Everyone is sending cards and calling. They look at me as if they have just run over my puppy. It is a look that reaffirms the magnitude of what is happening. I feel like I need to wake up from a nightmare.

I remember her saying something like that to me at the time and “I know” was all I could reply. But I didn’t know squat. I realized she just wanted me to listen to her vent about the things she had no control over. My daughters had taught me the lesson of listening to women which is often so difficult for a man; a man wants to fix it, right then and there. And sometimes there is no fix or the woman is working out her own solution to a problem by talking about it. That was what Taylor was doing at that moment.

I guess you could say this is the antithesis of Christmas, Taylor wrote. Besides the whole tumor thing, this would be a pleasant time. Missing school and seeing everyone. Doctors and tests, doctors and tests. They are not even sure what kind of tumor it is. This seems so unreal. Until last week, I never spent the night in a hospital and now I’m going in for brain surgery. Maybe after I do this then it will all turn out to be no big deal and everyone will feel stupid for getting crazy over nothing.

She went on to write about her beautiful long hair; she wanted to keep her hair. What seventeen-year-old girl wanted to lose her hair? The next day after that journal entry she was scheduled for eight hours of brain surgery and I remember kissing her cheek and taking my leave to allow her to gather things for her hospital stay.

Her sisters were throwing a pre-brain surgery pizza party in her hospital room when I arrived a bit later that evening. Taylor had a brave little smile as the twins teased her about a number of things not related to her impending surgery. I marveled at how close sisters were, unlike my brothers and I, who were never really tight. There was something about sisters I realized in that moment, for the sisters of this sibling sorority had drawn a protective curtain around their youngest member and were trying to give her strength for her upcoming ordeal. I realize women are superior to men in that regard: caring for others. It was so obvious in that hospital room that night, when all my daughters, both step and biological were all there together, drawing strength from each other with our own family version of Steel Magnolias. Oh, the girls welcomed me, all of them, but my presence certainly wasn’t necessary, and after a few minutes I walked over to Taylor and gave her another kiss on the cheek. She smiled again, looked straight into my eyes as if surveying my soul, and grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze as if to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. Sometimes things are said through the silence of a look and this was one of those times.

But it was only beginning. The next fourteen months would be the greatest challenge of all our lives as Taylor would document in her journal.