{"id":5008,"date":"2025-12-25T18:31:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T18:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/?p=5008"},"modified":"2025-12-25T18:31:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T18:31:24","slug":"im-34-terminally-ill-and-terrified-and-all-i-want-is-to-be-remembered-by-my-little-girl-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/?p=5008","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m 34, terminally ill and terrified\u2014and all I want is to be remembered by my little girl."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I\u2019m 34, I\u2019m dying, and I\u2019m terrified.<\/strong> I have terminal brain cancer. I don\u2019t even want to name the type\u2014what matters is that it\u2019s the kind that wins. Doctors say I have months, maybe less if things go badly. I\u2019ve been trying to hold it together for my wife, my daughter who isn\u2019t even three yet, my parents, and my friends, but I\u2019ve never been this scared in my life.<\/p>\n<p>People keep saying \u201cstay strong\u201d or \u201ctake it one day at a time.\u201d How the fuck do you do that when every day is just another step closer to leaving the people you love?<\/p>\n<p>I look at my daughter and the thought that she might not remember me is what breaks me the most. Will she remember the pancakes I made, or that stupid bunny voice that always made her giggle, or will she only have photos and a few videos?<\/p>\n<p>I watch my wife try to be strong and hold everything together, and I know she cries in the bathroom so I won\u2019t hear. We haven\u2019t really talked about the end; we pretend it\u2019s not real. We talk about paperwork, insurance, and what she\u2019ll need to do when I\u2019m gone, but we don\u2019t talk about the actual not-being-here part.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m scared of the pain, yes, but more than that I\u2019m terrified of missing everything: her first day of school, the first book she reads, the person she falls in love with. I want to be there so badly it hurts.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t even know what I want from writing this. I needed to say it out loud. I\u2019m not strong or brave. I\u2019m just a dad who\u2019s dying and doesn\u2019t want to leave his little girl behind.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m 34, I\u2019m dying, and I\u2019m terrified. I have terminal brain cancer. I don\u2019t even want to name the type\u2014what matters is that it\u2019s the kind that wins. Doctors say &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5013,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008\/revisions\/5013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}