My father is Q, and he has chronic pancreatitis. He drank heavily all my life and he refuses to see doctors until this past hospital visit. I know chronic pancreatitis isn’t necessarily terminal, at-least not immediately, but I can’t see my dad living any longer. He was abusive but also absent. He always smelled of Heineken but he treated me like a daughter, not a therapist or friend. We moved a lot because he lost jobs all the time but I always had a blanket to sleep with. We made a secret handshake when I was 3, he remembers 20 years later, even though I forgot. He gave me nicknames out of love, he never compared me to the other parent out of hate. He’s an alcoholic. The only parent I had who gave a crap about me is dying and I can’t take his pain away, he’d never let me anyway. I didn’t get the walk down the aisle, I didn’t get dadd-daughter dances. He might not live to meet his grandchildren. He still hasn’t even met my husband. I grew up with a dysfunctional family and my alcoholic father was the most functional and loving. I used to beg him every week to stop drinking. When I was four I broke all his beer bottles and screamed “that’s enough”. 19 years later and I want to do the same. I know they don’t recover until they want to, you can’t force them, but what if I had tried harder when I was little? He was my first heartbreak and my best friend and he’s dying and I can’t save him. I feel robbed, like I’m sure everyone here does too. I wanted a dad I never really had and now there’s never going to be the possibility.