My father suffered from pain in his knees, being distrustful of doctors he would never go to hospital. However as his condition deteriorated I forced him to go. After many tests, he was told he had bone cancer. My father had a mere two months to live. Two months of pure agony. He fought it at first, in agony he cried and groaned, but whenever I was near he would grit his teeth and put a brave face on. He could not bear for me to see him in this way. But at night I heard him, the sounds I heard would haunt me forever.
In about a month my father begged for death, he asked many times, it was my turn to have a brave face. I always told him it would get better, He knew I was lying, but I thought he took comfort from my reassurances. However a week before his “expiry date” he begged with the tone of a desperate man, he was no longer reassured by my pleas to tell him to live. I knew what he wanted; I knew he was too weak to do it himself, I knew that I must put him to rest in the most humane way possible. I got several morphine injections; he looked at me as I carried them in. A smile came to his lips, he looked like his old self again...He uttered his last words. “I gave you the right to life my son, and you shall give me the right to deaths. I am eternally grateful my child.” I cried both joyous and miserable, as I leant down I got the needles and stabbed them into any exposed skin I saw. He was dead within 10 minutes. It was painless, and he was smiling all the way.
I woke up, the next day after my father’s death. I was miserable but I turned the T.V on, keeping to my daily rituals. There was a breaking news story “Cure for bone cancer found. Treatment shall start immediately.” As I saw it, a tear came to my eye, I wiped it away as I realised that I should treasure the right to life my father had given me, and hope that my children would in turn give me the right to death I gave to my father.
