Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture.
~Kak Sri

I am visiting my mother in the hospital while she recovers from pneumonia and other complications from triple bypass surgery. She complains about the food to my brother, my father, my boyfriend, and me. My boyfriend and I have just returned to Houston from a Christmas visit to his parents’ home in Ohio, where I plan to go to law school in the fall.

If she is complaining, I reason, it means she is getting better. My brother motions for me to step outside and join him in the hall. He leads me to a stairwell, far beyond the hearing of my mom and dad. I prepare for the worst.

“You cannot go to law school,” he says. “Dad has cancer.”

My father, who never gets sick, who never missed a day of work in thirty years as a public school principal due to illness, has cancer.

“You can’t tell Mom,” he says.

So we walk back into her room, attempting poker faces. “What’s wrong?” she says, reading mine immediately. I change the subject.

My father is the calm in the storm to my mother’s “Chicken Little.” Recently he was on the news, calming a cafeteria full of students after a school shooting. He attends church and teaches Sunday school. He helps disadvantaged and at-risk students. He is my pillar of strength, the guy I called when I first moved to Houston and felt lost and hopeless in the Big City. He can’t have cancer. Not my dad.

He is planning his retirement with a brand new RV. He is ready to enjoy his golden years traveling the country with my mom once she recovers. But now he has cancer.

Once my mother learns of Dad’s diagnosis, she rouses herself in recovery far faster than she would have without a purpose. She eats healthier, exercises and mends her heart so she can take care of Dad. Neither she nor my father will hear of me staying in Houston or skipping law school.

I stay through Dad’s surgery to remove the tumor from his colon. His prognosis is good. So off to Ohio, and law school, I go.

Law school at age thirty-eight is not easy. Even for me, who made good grades in graduate school. Even in the most conducive environment it is tough. Add a new city, a boyfriend with two children who visit on weekends, two dogs and two cats in a tiny house and it gets tougher. The first year is a wake-up call. My grades slip. I lose my scholarship. But I begin to get the hang of it. I take on an internship, then a job. I switch to night classes. My grades improve.

I monitor Dad’s progress through phone calls and holiday visits. His cancer is in remission.

I have one semester of law school to complete. Suddenly the tiny house — with two dogs, two cats, and two children on weekends — gets even smaller. The children’s mother goes missing and emergency custody ensues. They move in with us. It is an adjustment for them and an adjustment for me. I am no longer “Dad’s Cool Girlfriend” who takes them shopping or to get ice cream. Now I am the lady who tells them to please play more quietly because I need to study.

In the meantime Dad’s cancer is back. Stage IV: a prognosis of six to eighteen months. We are back in Houston for Christmas and to tell my parents of our engagement. Ten days with my parents and no one says a word. I find out on the way to the airport to return to Ohio and law school.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I ask.

“I didn’t want you to mess up your grades again worrying,” Dad says. He is determined to beat it.

The last semester is tough but I manage it. My parents arrive in Ohio for my graduation in May.

I am in shock. My formerly portly father is gaunt. His pants are cinched at the waist. Fifty pounds lighter, he looks thirty years older. In a moment alone, I ask him how he is.

“Well, Sissy,” he says, “I’m not dead yet!”

They return to Houston and I concentrate on passing the Ohio bar exam. I use flash cards. I take prep classes. The three-day exam is grueling. I wait four months for the results.

Only to find out I have missed passing by one point.

All that time away from Dad while he was healthy and then while he is ill. For what? A law degree with no license. What good is that?

My employer is not impressed and I am let go. I feel like a failure.

I take a job as a freelance writer and photographer for the local independent newspaper while I consider my options.

“Why don’t you take the bar exam in Texas?” my mother says. “You can stay with us and study.”

No dogs, no cats, no kids. No distractions.

A former colleague has a job opening with flexible hours at his company. I will have plenty of time to study.

So I move back to my parents’ home in Houston, with whom I have not lived for nearly twenty years. It is another adjustment. I set up a schedule. Study before work. Bar prep on tapes in the car on my one-hour-each-way commute. Eat dinner with Mom and Dad. Study in the evenings and in bed by 10:00 p.m.

I spend free time with Dad. He will not talk about leaving, but it is only a matter of time. Whenever I ask how he is, I get the same answer: “Well, Sissy, I’m not dead yet!”

This time the exam is not so grueling. I am prepared. It is not easy but I know I have passed. In August I drive back to Ohio to help my fiancé pack the house. He has agreed to move himself and his children to Texas so I can be near my father.

We find a house to rent in my parents’ neighborhood — just across the street. In September Dad gets weaker. By November he rarely leaves the house, although he does manage to vote in the election. But there is pride in his eyes when I return from the licensing ceremony with a copy of the State Bar program for him. By Thanksgiving he cannot walk across the street to join us for dinner.

Two days before Christmas my father leaves this world for the next. Nearly eighteen months from his diagnosis.

That was 2005. Just one point kept me from passing the Bar in Ohio. Just one point almost dashed my dreams of being a lawyer.

What a difference one point can make. One point more and I’d be a lawyer in Ohio, rather than Texas. But that one point gave me eight more months with my dad.

~Amy Corron Power