No one has ever asked me what it's like growing up with a brain injured parent. Maybe it's because no one in our life understood, or wanted to understand, the severity of what had happened to my dad's brain. We hear cancer, we work towards remission, then we do our best to forget about it and never talk about it again. Well a brain tumor is not your typical cancer. The tumor can't just be "dealt with" because the tumor invaded the very core of that person and stole a part of their being, their identity.

Would I have wanted dad's tumor located in a different area of the brain that could have left him speechless, paralyzed, deaf, unable to walk, or worse? We all say he is "lucky" that it destroyed his right frontal lobe. "Nothing important is there," they said. "It won't leave him with significant deficits." But let me tell you what's in that 'unimportant' area. The frontal lobes:

• are our emotional control centers and home to our personalities
• are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgement and impulse control
• allow interpretation of feedback from the environment
• house attention and memory capabilities
• control social behavior

I don't want to be depressing. But there's a small part of me, an inner-child, who is still trying to fully grasp that there was a reason, a clinical reason, why my dad behaved the way that he did during my/our tender years. We've been aware of the brain tumor/brain damage fro 20 years now, but it most likely was growing, invading, damaging my dad's precious frontal lobe for decades before. His personality, his behavior was not monstrous. I've known those who have endured far worse. But if I could do something so childish as to wish for things to have been different, I wish for life without a brain tumor. I wish that he could have expressed on the outside who he is on the inside. I wish that the harsh words could have been soft, loving, sweet. I wish he could have hugged more and yelled less. I wish for him not to feel angry, but to feel peace, love. I wish for him to be healed as my heart has been healed. God has given me the ability to love him unconditionally and when I look at him I don't think of these memories any more. I plainly see my dad, his imperfect self, a loving, intelligent, talented man, a fatherless boy who is still somewhat trapped inside, yearning to be more than his brain injury.