“It might be colon cancer.”

Or it might not.

Either way, there’s no going back.

‘The cat is out of the bag.’

‘The jig is up.’

My father is mortal — always has been,

Always will be.

I hadn’t noticed

Before

I was a kid.

II.

The doctors found a mass in my dad’s colon today. We have to wait 3 days to find out if it’s cancerous. There’s not much to do right now except stay positive and wait, and it may come to pass that it’s nothing.

And yet, it’s something to me. It’s the first time I’ve thought hard about what life would be like without my dad. In a sense, I am blessed that for 24 years I’ve been able to live in ignorance of the basic fact that my parents will not live forever.

Even if everything’s fine, now that I’ve seriously considered it, there’s no going back. It’s a one-way transition: like the first time you recognized yourself in the mirror, the first time you understood people had minds of their own, the first time you realized your parents could make mistakes, your first crush, your first kiss, your first love, the first time you had sex, the first time you had your heart broken. All of these transitions are one-way. You can’t unlive them.

As painful as some may be, I don’t think I would want to unlive them. Life is a process of one-way transitions; wisdom a result. Each experience informs how we want to live the rest of our lives. I hope my dad is okay and we spend more time together because of this.