"To HCC, For Gen. Delfin"--Hannah

Dear Hepatic Cancer,
Growing up my parents convinced me you were a fancy word for a cold, like the type you get during flu season when it's chilly outside, the kind of sickness a simple minded kid concluded to be “curable” based off the fact that your name started with the same letter. Later on I learned that Cancer was not your first name, but your last. Instead, your name started with an “H” and meant that you lived in livers. I knew a liver was the size of a football and you caused people pain, but you were a distant disease that never crossed my childhood mind. Yet, you wanted to meet my family, to be a part of my family. You introduced yourself to my grandfather first.
Before you, he was capable of owning the perfect combination of the two greatest things a healthy man could ever ask for: freedom and happiness. Believe me when I tell you he had the spirit of a young boy ready to play basketball with the friendly neighbors or run down hills just for the hell of it. His grin could wipe off any frown on any face within a ten feet radius, for it always shined of pure golden joy. Legend has it that he was the most dynamic man alive, the man of not one but all twenty four hours.Trust me when I say my grandpa is not a hyperbole. After all I should know, I am his granddaughter. I will forever be his granddaughter. But then somehow you decided to come into our lives. How dare you.
When you were born, you took all the attention. I was only six when my grandpa unwillingly had to commit every second of the day to you. Six years of life and I had no idea you existed. From then on, I was given no other choice than to cope with the stranger that suddenly lived in our household. I remember we were dancing one day in the living room to Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon.” That was the day when you made an unexpected appearance to a dance party I am positive you were not invited to. You took him first by the chest and then the rest of his lower body, only to sway him down to the floor. All at once, the man who always beat me at “who could make it to the stop sign first” races and “who could eat the cookie off their face the fastest” contests lost in the fight to stand on his feet. It was then that I discovered my grandfather’s deepest, darkest secret. You didn't hesitate to come back however. You had always been the type to rudely return with multiple guests in order to disrupt our family’s peaceful dinner. Numbers of your family would just spawn in that damned football-sized organ, spread to every end of his body, and consume all the time we ever got to spend with him. Thanks to you, he soon found himself unable to watch Filipino novellas with my grandmother and kiss her ten seconds after the end to assure her that the main couple will prevail just as their love always will. At that point they were always together at the hospital, this time with her providing the assurance that everything will be ok. He no longer felt the urge to eat, even though my little brother and I always tried to feed him. Spoonful after spoonful. Relentlessly, my mother would tend to him when she should have been walking around the park with him just to hear his tales about his life

in the military for the millionth time because it was his favorite anecdote to tell. In these cases, you have succeeded.
But let me make this clear. For the most part you failed. Although you took him away, his death was never meant to be a silent end to an era of suffering. Through you, I got much closer to my brother, and I discovered that my grandma and mother were two of the strongest women I know. I am not saying you are a walk in the park, and the emotions of grief and shock are very real. You see, the unsuccessful part of it all is that those sullen feelings don’t need to be mentioned. In fact, I haven’t felt the need to feel them for so long because as long as my grandfather has his golden smile, his need for speed, and his everlasting war stories, he is still my living, breathing grandfather. Never was he taken away by the symptoms of a disease, but sailed to paradise by grace alone.
Ever since we met, I learned to make good use of the one thing you cannot touch. Love. Earnestly,
Hannah Nicole