The Other Side of Nice

This spring will mark three years since my dad died of cancer.

Do you ever look back at your life and divide it into “before” and “after”? For me, that moment was losing a parent.

When my dad first told me he had colon cancer, I was in shock. I never imagined cancer would touch our family. It took a few days for the news to truly sink in, and when it did, I cried. Watching someone you love face something so big is impossible to put into words. But my dad was brave. He put his full faith in the medical system, showed up for every chemo treatment and every surgery, and never once complained. I was so proud of him.

When he beat it, we believed he was finally free and clear. We celebrated and breathed easier. But life had other plans. One evening while out for dinner, we noticed he was struggling to swallow his food. A few weeks later, after a scan, we learned there was a spot on his esophagus. Just like that, we were on another cancer journey—one that would prove to be much harder.

Dad remained hopeful and trusted his doctors completely, and they truly were wonderful. But this time, cancer had the upper hand. Watching the treatments drain him and seeing him slowly become a shell of the man he once was, was one of the hardest things I have ever witnessed. Harder still was watching him face the reality of end-of-life decisions; signing paperwork, meeting with the palliative doctor, and finally going into the hospital knowing he would not be coming home.

I also had to be the one to talk to my mom about shifting the focus from fighting to keeping him comfortable. Those conversations broke me in ways I still can’t fully explain. I knew my dad was scared, but one of my greatest regrets is that we never talked about it. We kept our conversations light, avoiding the heaviness of what was really happening and skirting around the weight of it all. Maybe I was trying to protect him. Maybe I was trying to protect myself.

When the end came, he died peacefully, with Mom and I in the room. The shock hit me all over again. I didn’t cry right away; not until I told my kids. It was only a couple of months later, while cleaning out a storage unit of his and driving past my parents’ old house, that the full wave of grief hit. I cried uncontrollably.

Two things can be true at the same time. In that moment, and in the weeks and months that followed, I felt lost, like a little girl who no longer had a father, but I was also a mother who knew her children—and her own mother—needed me to be the strong one now. Both lived in the same body. Both were real.

I still miss him in so many ways. We didn’t always see eye to eye. When I was young and left home because he didn’t agree with my choices, there were words spoken on both sides that weren’t kind. We were stubborn. We were hurt. And for a time, there was distance.

But a few years later, something shifted. He always had my back. In a quiet, steady way, he became my safe place again. He was the one person I could always count on to keep his word. If I trusted him with something, I knew it would stay with him. He never spoke badly about me, never betrayed my confidence, never let me down in that way.

Losing that steady presence in my life has left an ache I don’t think will ever fully disappear.

Grief has been a long road. Sometimes it is quiet and steady; other times it sneaks up on me when I least expect it. What I carry most, though, is the honor of having walked beside him through his final chapter, and the reminder of what it means to truly love and be loved in return.

Looking back, there are a few lessons this journey taught me—ones I hope might help anyone walking a similar path:

• Grief begins before loss. What I was feeling during my dad’s illness was anticipatory grief. It is okay to grieve while your loved one is still here. It doesn’t mean you are giving up; it means you are human.

• Caregiving is love in action. It isn’t glamorous. It looks like appointments, meals, listening, and simply being present. In those quiet acts, love speaks the loudest.

• The hard conversations matter. My biggest regret is not talking to my dad about his fear. Avoiding it didn’t make it disappear; it only left things unsaid. If you can, be brave enough to have those conversations. They may bring peace to both of you.

• Shock is part of grief. Even when you know the end is coming, loss can still feel unreal. Give yourself time. The emotions don’t always arrive all at once.

• Find comfort in what remains. I still lean on the lessons my dad left behind—his honesty, his steadiness, his integrity. They continue to guide the person I strive to be.

I didn’t know, as I baked his cake for his 71st birthday, that it would be the last one.

Maybe that is the quiet truth about love: we are always creating memories we don’t yet know we will someday cling to.

My dad had a way of leaving laughter tucked inside the hard moments. He used to tease my daughter Jordyn and tell her she needed to marry a rich man because she had “exquisite taste.” As she got older, she’d just smile and quote Cher: “I am a rich man.” He loved that. It felt like his way of telling her she was already enough, already whole, already worthy of a big, beautiful life.

That’s how I try to remember him now—not only in the hospital rooms and hard conversations, but in the humor, the steadiness, the quiet way he loved us.

Last summer, her and I were texting when she asked me if I had heard Noah Kahan’s then unreleased song The Great Divide that he performed at a live event in Boston. Almost instantly, I felt a connection and we were replying to each other at the same time “This reminds me of Gramp.” It wasn’t just the words—it was the feeling of standing on the edge between what was and what would never be again. That space between before and after. The place grief lives. Since then, that song has felt like it belongs to him, to us, to the road we walked as a family. It’s been on repeat since it’s release last Friday.

Grief is not something we “get over.” It is something we learn to carry, and over time it softens. What remains is love, and the privilege of having walked alongside someone you loved in their final chapter. To me, that is sacred.

If you are walking this path, may you find small moments of peace and connection that remind you your love still carries on.