2011

Dad took every opportunity he could to tell us how proud he was to be surrounded by women—as strong as they were soft, and as confident as they were vulnerable. He didn't parade around his proximity to women like a badge of honor because he knew it would only serve to center himself under the spotlight instead of highlighting the very women he championed day in and day out, and he had also been a staunch supporter of women from before he started a family with one because that was how he was raised, so being an ally was something he recognized as the bare minimum. But I appreciated him for that.

Not every woman had that kind of father, and I knew I was lucky. As a woman, it wasn't always the easiest to find a man that made me feel safe to be around. Sure, I was only seventeen and had a lot of life to live through, but even now, I recognized the reality of what it meant to live as a woman in a patriarchal world. While being an ally and supporter for those who faced certain disadvantages in life was a bare minimum, that didn't mean I couldn't appreciate my father for the role he played in my life. He did his best to be the best father to his three daughters, and to make sure we felt comfortable, safe, and welcomed in this world. The values he instilled in me, as well as the sincere understanding of my worth and place in the world, were a result of my upbringing.

Even though I should have been working on my paper for class since it was due at the end of the week, I couldn't tear my eyes away from him. As someone who had known me my entire life, he never looked less like himself than he did then, yet I still recognized him as one of the people I felt closest to in the world.

I wasn't sure why tonight was so different. There wasn't anything special about it. Mom, Kanani, and Leimomi had all driven to the movies. I had almost gone with them, but not only was I tired from a particularly stressful day at school, I also had zero interest in seeing whatever movie they were watching. Something about a family who were supposedly descendants of Hawaiian royalty, except the entire cast was white. I had no doubt it was probably going to be a visually stunning film—anything set in Hawai'i was bound to be—but nothing appealed to me about stories set in Hawai'i that centered on white characters and actors.

Since Dad also decided he didn't want to go for many reasons, one of which was that he was too tired to sit through an entire movie nowadays, that also helped to settle my decision to stay home.

The night had mostly been quiet so far as he watched TV and I tried to do my homework after eating the dinner Mom made before they all left for the movies. Most of the food on both of our plates had been left untouched, but for different reasons. The less I thought about it, the better chance I had at not letting my mood plummet further than it already had.

I hated to admit how normal all of this had become. How easy it was to forget there was a time before it. I looked across the room at my father, slumped down on the couch that had become his favorite place to spend basically all day, every day since it gave him easy access to mindless entertainment, as well as not having to climb up the stairs. So many months had been spent actively trying to fight against his sickness being the norm that even thinking about it now felt as if I was being held at gunpoint by my own feelings.

Instead, I tried to remember what he looked like before. It should have been easier than it was because it hadn't even been a whole year since we were first informed he had cancer, but I sat there for a while trying to replace the image in front of me with something from my memory. A memory as familiar as the back of my hand, and yet now entirely foreign.

I thought about a fuller face and a richer color to his skin; clear signs he was eating healthy and to his heart's content, as well as a visible sign he was soaking up all that a Hawaiian sun had to offer. That was the man I had to remember, no matter what his illness turned him into.

Naturally, it brought me to thoughts about myself when I was younger and how much I had changed. Life moved so slowly it was hard to see the changes day by day; all of sudden, I was hit by a memory that forced me to reconcile a past that conflicted with the present's understanding. They were the same people, all the same people around me, and I was the same me, but they were also as different as I was.

"You're staring, Hoku."

Embarrassed to have been caught, even though I wasn't making enough of an effort to not be obvious about it so I had no reason to be surprised, I lifted my laptop higher so we couldn't look at each other. It was a cowardly move, but if the alternative was letting him see right through me as expertly as my father had always been capable of, I could tolerate the judgment.

He cleared his throat. "What are you working on?"

"A boring paper." The battery percentage flashed angrily at me, begging to be plugged in, but I couldn't be bothered with getting up to find the charger. "You'd think they would start giving us something different to read by now but I'm still writing papers about Animal Farm as a senior."

"Again?"

"I'm just glad it's not The Great Gatsby again."

He laughed. "I think your sister would have gotten into a fight with her teachers if she had to read that book more than once."

"We are both prepared to go to jail for Leimomi if she needs us to."

I couldn't see the expression on his face, but I was sure it was nothing short of pride. While my father wasn't an advocate for physical violence, he could handle being an apologist for the right reasons. "I'm sure you two are."

Some time passed and I didn't get much done. When it came to writing, I pretty much had two modes: write until my fingers were about to fall off or take two hours just to write the word the before deleting it an hour later because I had too many sentences in a row that started the same way. The more I tried to push it, the less likely my words would start to make sense, so I tried to stop once I reached that point. Eventually, the laptop died and I tossed it aside so I could stop pretending as if I was being even remotely productive.

"What's on your mind, baby?"

I sighed, leaning back in my seat until I was laying down. "Nothing."

"Don't lie to me," he said. "It never works."

There were a lot of times I had lied recently that he never caught. That, or he just didn't call me out on it. Now that I thought about it, it was probably the latter, but my ego liked to lean toward the former. "Can't hurt to try."

"Can't hurt to tell the truth," he countered.

This time, I laughed. "I don't know about that. A lot of people have gotten in trouble for speaking the truth."

He looked at me curiously, head tilted and remnants of a smile on his lips. "And what kind of trouble do you think you're going to get into?"

It wasn't that I thought he would be mad if I opened up more about how I had been feeling recently. There were a lot of reasons as to why I didn't, such as taking his pain and turning the conversation around to me and my feelings, but, most of all, I knew it would make him sad, and that was the last thing I needed.

The unfortunate side effect was that it left me bottled up with all these feelings that had nowhere to go. Kanani and I didn't see eye to eye on most things nowadays, as much as we wanted to lean on each other, and Leimomi was too young to fully grasp a lot of what was going on. Kaipo tried his best, and if there was anyone I thought I could talk to, it was him, but even that had limitations. As far as other support systems, I lacked anything else. I didn't have friends or acquaintances. The thought of approaching a counselor at school made my skin itch; I didn't want to be there in the first place, let alone seek any sort of solace inside that forsaken place. All of that left me with nothing but my own thoughts and the regret over not being able to forge those kinds of relationships that would have come in handy.

"How are you feeling?" I asked instead of answering.

He shifted in his seat with stilted movements and a pained grimace. It took everything in me not to fly across the short distance and cradle him in my arms as if I was the parent and he was a new child just brought into the world.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." As the words came out of their own accord, surprise was laced between each one. It wasn't that I wanted to pick a fight or upset him, but he asked for the truth from me when he wasn't being honest with himself. "You look terrible."

He rubbed a hand down his face. "You sure know how to make your old man feel good."

"I'm sorry."

"At least you're saying something." Even though I insulted him, my father was the stronger person. He found a way to see the light in a situation shrouded in darkness. That was one of his superpowers that I wished I had. "I don't want you to look at me like that."

My throat constricted, threatening to swallow down the words. "How else am I supposed to look at you?"

"Like you always have."

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't find the strength to do it, and I cast my glance aside. Out of shame; out of pain; out of desperation.

One of my favorite sights to see was when my mom or dad would come home from work while the other was in the kitchen cooking. Whoever arrived later would sneak up on the other, wrap their arms around their waist, and rest their head on the other. For a few seconds, they would remain that way, and it was something so beautiful I had always wished I could capture it with a camera to save for the rest of our lives. But as soon as I would run to grab my phone and come back, they would already be onto something else, and I somehow never remembered to prepare myself for the next time it happened. Maybe it was better off that way, as a memory shared between the two of them and whatever lucky person had been there to witness it.

That afternoon when Mom had come home, Dad wasn't standing in the kitchen waiting for her. He sat in that same spot he was in now, with me also in my current spot. She pressed a hand gently to the side of his face, smiled down at him, and sat right at his side, tucking herself in like they were teenagers still in their honeymoon stage.

It made me want to cry then, just as I did now thinking about it.

Without any warning, my father grabbed his phone from the side table and started playing a song, turning up the volume. I recognized it after two seconds. Some songs touched a part of my heart in a way that felt as if it was being awoken from a deep slumber. All My Life was one of those. I could recall countless nights when our family would be hanging out on the back porch, eating good food, playing good music, and enjoying good company. They were some of the best nights of my life. Without fail, my father always sang All My Life with the kind of passion that came so easily that I could have been convinced it was his song. To me, it was. Everything about that song reminded me of him. He owned it like no other.

Sitting there now, observing the way he looked at me, everything hit me like I had run headfirst into a wall. All of those past nights flooded back to the forefront of my thoughts, and I couldn't escape them if I tried. But the thing was, I didn't want to. I wanted to be able to remember all of those wonderful memories for as long as I could because I knew one day, maybe one day soon, they were all I would have left. And even further down the line, when I was too old to remember my own name, I wouldn't have them at all anymore.

"Let's dance," he said and repeated himself when I didn't move. "Come on, Hoku. Dance with me."

Even as his words sparked with excitement, they juxtaposed against the languid nature of his movements, bogged down by the pain he tried so hard to mask. The amount of effort he took just to sit up on the sofa was more than he should have needed, more than any man his age should have needed, and it was hard to watch. It wasn't fair that someone so strong, someone who had given so much to me over the years, should have to go through this, and it wasn't fair that I couldn't help him.

"Dad, stop," I tried to say, but he was hearing none of it. If there was something my father truly wanted, he would do everything he could to get it, and he wanted this dance with his daughter.

"Baby, please," he begged. His voice cracked into fault lines that spread until they reached the center of my chest. "I need your help."

I could have shattered right then and there. His request seemed doomed from the start because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to hold myself up, let alone carry him. I found myself simultaneously wishing I had gone to the movies instead, while also feeling guilty for actively wanting to not be around my father when, as much as we wanted to remain hopeful, wasn't guaranteed to be around for much longer.

My feet dragged like they were anchors straining to keep me in place. There was less of my father to hold onto nowadays, and what I could still hold felt like a completely different person. His muscles were gone, along with almost every other part of him, and squeezing him tight as I helped him stand up had me worried I would somehow bruise him.

When he was able to stand, still clinging to me, the first verse had started. He tried his best not to lean too much of his weight on me, with one arm wrapped around my shoulders while the other held my hand. The two of us swayed side to side with small steps so as to not knock us off balance. It took a few seconds to get used to it. By the time it felt normal again—as close to normal as it could get; who even knew what normal was anymore—I had almost forgotten what year it was.

As the song carried on, I felt myself tighten up until eventually, I let go of his hand so I could wrap both of my arms around his waist. Disregarding any previous concern for hurting him, I squeezed so tightly that we could have merged as one person. Part of me wished that was possible so I could take some of his pain away instead of feeling like I was causing him more harm by not being able to stand looking at him.

"Baby, I need to tell you something, and I know you're not going to want to listen but I need you to do it anyway, okay?" His question was thick with hesitation balanced with a certain need to proceed, which concerned me. But it also solidified the explicit understanding of his daughter to know how she would react.

I tightened my arms around him. "Dad—"

"Mom is gonna need your help around the house, okay? She can't only rely on Kanani. She's going to need you as well."

"Please don't." The tears started falling, and I so desperately wanted to wipe them away, remove any evidence of them, but that would mean letting him go and I wasn't about to do that. I would never let him go, not in this lifetime or the next or any after that.

"You can ignore everything I've said about Kaipo. He's a good guy. A good friend. Lean on him when you need to. I know he'll be there for you."

"Please."

"Make sure... make sure Leimomi gets the same chance all of you had, okay? She'll get there, wherever she wants to go, but she'll look to you both to guide her. She'll look to you. I know you don't see it, but she admires you a lot. Don't let that scare you but don't let her down either."

There were so many tears by that point they left a huge wet spot on his gray shirt, and yet, I still burrowed my face further into his chest, desperate to block out the sound of everything else because I didn't want to listen to them. I refused to take this conversation at face value or the deeper meaning behind his words.

"Please," I pleaded. "Don't do this."

"I have to, baby." His voice was choked with the onslaught of his own tears that fell upon the top of my head. With all the strength he had left in him, he returned my tight grip with all of his might. He was always going to be enough for me, but enough should be much longer. So, so much longer. "Hoku, can you look at me? Not like you do now. Like you did before."

Being faced with the painful truth my father recognized even if I had never voiced them out loud felt like a stab to the chest. Straight to the fucking heart, if I even had one anymore. It made it that much harder to look up at him, afraid that I wouldn't be able to hide the fear and pain that haunted every one of my features since we found out about his cancer.

As steadily as one could when they were walking on thin ice, I tilted my head up and took him in, once again trying to remember him as he was before. Except I tried everything I could to see him as he was now—my father, no matter what sickness had taken hold of him. He was who he was before and the person standing before me now, and there was no reason I should let him think either version of him didn't have the right to stand in front of me or ask for help.

"No matter what happens, Hokulani, know that you'll be okay. You'll be okay," he repeated. "You're so strong, stronger than you give yourself credit for, and you're so brave. You prove that to yourself every day when you wake up and get out of bed because that's sometimes the hardest thing we can ask of ourselves. Trust me; I know. And I know your heart is heavy, baby, but you'll make it through. Even if I can't be there anymore, promise me you won't give up, okay? Promise me."

"Papa, you're scaring me."

"I know, baby. I'm so sorry." He pulled my head back into his chest and kissed the top of it. The song continued, nearing the end, but we had stopped moving and now stood entangled in the center of the living room. "But I need you to promise me you won't give up, okay? Please."

I had never been more frightened to say two words in my life because not knowing if I meant them was agonizing, but not saying them was even worse. Listening to my father apologize for something out of control, something that was draining the life out of him day by day, was the most destructive experience of my life.

"I promise," I whispered.

The song had stopped. I promise ricocheted back at me as if I had yelled them for the whole world to hear.

And my whole world heard them. "I love you, always."

"I love you." For all my life.