The Witness

Abstract

This creative non-fiction essay explores my father’s experiences with multiple forms of cancer and my mother’s diagnosis with Huntington’s disease, illnesses that emerged in my young adulthood and continue today. Focusing particularly on my father’s cancer, I analyze its devastating impacts on his life and my own trauma as the child of chronically ill parents, which I still grapple with as an adult. Taking an expansive view of illness and its effects on the whole family, I use my and my father’s shared love of poetry to chronicle how his cancer altered our relationship to each other and to the world. Ultimately, this essay digs into the value and complexity of bearing witness to suffering, especially when witnessing a loved one’s pain.