Sound Anniversary
It’s been March 9th all day. I was confused for most of it. The date felt weighted, but I couldn’t remember why. For a brain like mine, particularly hinged to all things calendar, it was especially confusing. It hit me during first grade music, my last class of the school day. A flash reel of memories appeared in front of my face. The winding entrance to the parking garage at UVA Hospital in Charlottesville. March 9, 2001. The elevator with me, a nurse wearing blue gloves that almost matched her scrubs, and my dad in a wheelchair - my hands on its U-shaped handles, awkwardly turning it diagonally to accommodate the shrinking elevator space. We were riding up to the surgical floor. A team of surgeons would spend 13 hours removing a tumor the size of a silver dollar from the back of my dad’s tongue. This, according to the oncologists in Roanoke and their accompanying pamphlets, would give him six months to a year longer to live. He was at stage IV cancer at the time of diagn