It’s hard to hold the river of tears that come out of your eyes when someone like family tells you some painful news. It breaks you down and all you can do is cry and cry, until your eyes are so puffed that you can’t cry anymore. He tells me, “The doctors said that I will die in less than two years.” I ask him why, why does He want to take you away from us? He looked at me and hugged me tight. He said, “The chemotherapy is just not working, ‘Mija.’” He also had other cancers that were killing him little by little. How much it hurt me to see him so weak he couldn’t even walk sometimes, but this was not the first time a Doctor told him some news like this. He only believed it this time because he saw how he was getting worse every time a day passed by.

I met him as my dad’s friend when I was 8 years old. We slowly started to get close to him and he also started to get close to us. Time passed and I started to care for him and love him as if he was family. He is like a second dad to me; we would always talk about random things and laugh. He would come over and cookout with us, and we would always have a blast. But there were moments where I saw him depressed; I saw him weak, like life was being taken away from him. I remember asking him if he was okay. He would say, “I’m just tired Mija.” I remember when he first opened up with us; he gathered my siblings and me. He confided that he looked depressed, tired, and sad because he has cancer. This was the reason why sometimes in the year we wouldn’t see him as much as we would too. He said that he didn’t want us to see him fragile. It all made sense when he told us this.

As a year passed he was now getting better. He took pills that were prescribed for the pain, and he was starting to walk without his cane. He would no longer shake as he picked up his cup of water or his spoon when he ate. I saw how he started to get his eyebrows back little by little. I couldn’t understand, “How was this happening? I remember him telling me he would die in less than two years.” I feel that the love surrounding him was what made him not give up and fight for his life. I remember him crying and telling my parents, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.” I also remember him asking God, “Why are you doing this to me?” I was crying when I heard this because I knew that his cancer was getting worse. He is still fighting cancer. All I can do is make him laugh and make more memories. I thank God for not taking him away from the ones who love him.