Alyssa and Windy
“He found a way to be present. I remember how important that was to him and my mom—to always be present. Some of the things that they did for my brother and me, I don't know how they did it. It’s even more amazing to me as a parent now, knowing how hard it is. It was so impressive because he didn't change who he was from work to real life; he was just him.”
Alyssa was 19 years old when she lost her father Wendell to pancreatic cancer.
“Alyssa, you need to come home. Dad just passed out. We're going to the hospital.”
Weeks away from leaving for her sophomore year of college at Oregon State University and wrapping up work at her summer job in her hometown of Tigard, OR, Alyssa rushed home.
Alyssa’s father, Wendell (Windy) had been experiencing abdominal pain for some time, but no one was too concerned. He had mostly kept it to himself until things changed in an instant. Tests, confusion and waiting. Waiting for answers. The answer eventually came: doctors believed he was experiencing pancreatitis and needed surgery as soon as he was strong enough following the incident. He needed a procedure called the Whipple surgery, also known as a pancreaticoduodenectomy, which is a surgical procedure that removes affected organs and tissues from the digestive system. This was good news, a fairly uncomplicated procedure to fix this.
Alyssa recalled how she felt as she sat in the waiting room, anticipating the news of a successful procedure. “It's supposed to be a really quick surgery. Not very long. But then an hour goes by, and longer goes by. And at that point, you're thinking what's happening? We haven't gotten any updates. This is supposed to go really smoothly.” Finally, someone from the surgery team came out to the waiting room and delivered the news that would change Alyssa’s life forever. During the surgery, they found out that Windy did not have pancreatitis. He had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and it had already spread.
“That's a moment in time that I can't really communicate well. It felt like time stopped. It felt like everything was moving in slow motion.” The doctors gave him six months to live.
The family eventually brought Windy home, and Alyssa did head back to school for her fall quarter. Over the next few months, things started to change quickly. “He had jaundice. He was losing weight. He wasn't doing well. They tried to put him through chemo. It wasn't working. He just wasn't strong enough for it. They recommended we put him on hospice.”
The holidays arrived, and Alyssa was back home. Her father was still in hospice care at their home. Alyssa described the mood in her house when she returned: “I was actually scheduled to go on a work trip to the Great Wolf Lodge in Washington... During that time, we were trying to figure out how to still find joy in all this hardship that we were all experiencing. But one day, my mom just knew. I had some friends over, and my mom pulled me aside and told me, ‘I don't think you should go on your work trip, and I think your friends should go home.’” Later that day, Alyssa lost her father.
“I remember that happening. I was in such shock; I wanted to do a puzzle. One of my best friends came over and just sat silently with me, and we did a puzzle because I didn't even know how to function. We didn't know how to function as a family in that time. Then all of a sudden, the hearse is coming. It just felt like all the things you've seen in movies were happening in real time. And no one knew how to feel. No one tells you how to go through those things. What do you say? How do you feel? Is it normal that I'm just sitting here doing a puzzle because I don't know what else to do?”
After Wendell’s passing, the holidays came and went, and winter quarter fast approached. Alyssa remembers not wanting to return to school, not wanting to leave her family. She did end up heading back to school after a long conversation with her mom and uncle, where her dad’s brother told her that her dad would want her to finish school.
Alyssa was in a sorority, surrounded by friends who were excited to be back in their college town, catching up and getting back into the swing of college life. “Going back at 19 to your sophomore year of college when people don't want to think about things like that was really hard. I felt lost and isolated and tried to pretend like nothing was wrong. I had a few people who understood what was going on, but I remember thinking how I didn’t want to put this on anyone. I wanted my friends to enjoy their college experience, not being around this mad girl who's grieving and not enjoying hers.”
That term was difficult, as was the rest of college. Alyssa and her family celebrated her father every year and started the journey of healing to move forward. Alyssa explained how her coping mechanism was to run away from the heaviness that is grief: “keeping myself so busy that I didn't have to think about it. The amount of things I did to not think about it, and to only celebrate him when it was the times that I needed to.”
“That's what I did for several years because I didn't know how to talk about it, and I didn't know who was safe to talk about it with.” Alyssa became hyper-aware of the life moments that would come and go without her father being a part of them; marrying her husband that would never meet her dad, walking down the aisle without him, and him becoming a grandpa.
Parenting brings forth another level of complicated and confusing emotions while also navigating grief. “There are so many layers. The photos and being able to tell stories is a predictable part of the grief. But there are ones you can’t be prepared for. Driving down the road one day, my daughter tells us from the backseat that she wants Grandpa Windy to be here. Now I’m crying at the wheel, but it becomes a great opportunity to talk about him and share with my family what he was like. That is just her curiosity.” Alyssa explained how she has chosen to be open about it with her daughter and to talk about it whenever she gets the chance. “Then she gets to learn, and then also my husband gets to learn about him. But also they both get to understand how my grief can show up in unexpected moments at the same time.”
I asked Alyssa how she is able to support friends who have experienced losing a parent. She explained how it becomes an opportunity to show up for them—not when everyone else does, but later, after a few months, when most of your support system has returned to their lives. That is when she swoops in and remembers how lonely it was and lends a hand to her friends when they still need it.
Something else that came up in our conversation was the societal norm of responding to the most commonly used small-talk prompt, “How are you?” We always say “good,” even if we are not good. Alyssa brought it up: what would it be like if we all collectively decided to be real with each other, to show when we need support and when we are truly “good”? I imagine the world might be a little more forgiving, supportive, and approachable.
This idea carried more weight as we continued on, and in her own words, “a story that is still being written.”
In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, Alyssa was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), which is a lesser-known type of leukemia. She explained her initial reaction: “I get my own cancer diagnosis, and that second it unlocks all this trauma and grief that I hadn't felt for a long time… it was very challenging to reconcile. This was a type of cancer I didn't even know existed when I got diagnosed. My oncologist talked through it with me to reiterate that it is manageable. It's going to be long-term. Something I live with. It's slow, compared to my dad’s stage 4 diagnosis when we first found it. All types of language set in your head, but when I got diagnosed and through all that time, all I could think of was how I need to be here for my daughter and my family because of what I have felt losing my dad throughout the past 12, 13, 14 years. I cannot put my daughter through that.”
“So what do I need to do to make sure that I stay alive and OK? What can I control? A lot of it is treatment that I'm on. I'm probably going to be on it for life. There's so much to unpack with that. And now it's been over three years. It has its own form of grief because I grieve my former self. Before I had cancer, I grieve the life before all this. I grieve the fact that my dad was going through these things and I had no idea how it made him feel. The loneliness in the rooms, the loneliness in the car, the waiting, the anxiety of results. The specialists—it almost unlocked this new level of understanding that I wish I could have talked to him about. That was a big experience to think through. That was not the legacy that I thought I would carry from it.”
Today, Alyssa has chosen to approach her diagnosis and future with leadership and advocacy. Controlling what she can control, and supporting others who are in need of it.
“I've always been vulnerable. I've always been comfortable speaking about it, so it's allowed me to lean into more patient advocacy and to show up for others. It’s allowed me to have important conversations with people close to me—conversations that we haven't had for a long time or ever had. Because I'm now feeling different versions of grief and working with my therapist to figure it out. I think of it through color coding. It's all different flavors of it…I don't know what the rest of these years are going to hold, where they're going to take me. But I know that I feel like I've felt my dad in the hospital, and at the times when fear has overpowered me. I've written a lot of letters to him to process that, and I probably will for a very long time.”
Alyssa’s experience has had a profound impact on how I show up in my daily life. I find myself more present, more centered, and focused on trying to be the best version of myself for my family. Throughout our conversation, I found myself reflecting about my own grief journey and the moments that are a part of it. I put myself in that room in my mind, watching Alyssa doing a puzzle hours after losing her father, and was taken back to a similar night at my house when my father passed. It was a little different—my dad was at the hospital surrounded by family, and my grandma had taken my brother and I home so that we were not there when he died. I remember sitting on the floor in my living room playing with a toy when my mom came home and told my brother and I that “Daddy left for heaven.” I was only five, not a young adult like Alyssa, but I do remember how I felt in that moment as I continued to play with my toys. From the hardest days, to some of the best in your life as Alyssa previously noted, I relate to the confusion of feeling the utmost joy and deep seated sadness simultaneously when acknowledging the absence of the person you need most. No matter how old you get, you never stop needing your parents. You come to the realization that even in the midst of life’s most joyful moments, there will remain a lifetime of longing. I too share that feeling of emptiness when it hits you that all you want is your dad to be there with you for those moments. I still have many more to face.
Perhaps the most impactful part, however, came when the story transitioned to Alyssa’s own diagnosis and fight with cancer. We share the experience of losing a dad to cancer and then becoming a parent to a little girl. I reflected on how I felt throughout childhood about cancer. I was scared I would get it one day, that it would take away the chance for me to spend time with my kids. That it would rob another generation of time, love, and memories with their dad. This fear crippled me for decades. It still does, to be honest. After talking to Alyssa, the relationship I have with my fear is changing. Seeing her face her circumstances with strength and resilience has inspired me in ways I didn’t expect. It serves as a good reminder that your fear is never finite. It can evolve with the right help.
Alyssa is the first person that I have met through Lost Parent Project that I did not know prior, as her story came up in my conversation with Payton Crawford last year. Alyssa’s story, like all of them so far, validate the need for this platform—for more community, support, and conversations. I’m moved to find the next story that needs to be told.
Thank you, Alyssa.
