He’s dead to me.

I look at the picture frame. We're smiling. I'm asleep in the baby stroller, my mother's hand stablilizing my tilting head. My sister crouches next me, my borther brother bearing a toothy grin. My father kneels, in the background.

I havn't seen my father in years. His round, squared face, the evenly parted thick shining black hair seem foreign to me. He smiles in the photo, wearing a white short sleeved polo, his skin smooth and pale.

I remember, when I was younger he would come home, smiling, leaving work behind the doorstep. He would lift me, high above his head, and swing me from his arms. I would be a mountain climber, walking sideways along the cabinets, as he held me in place.

I would look out the window in the summer, and watch my father mow the lawn, a mask over his nose to avoid grass blades. In the winter, he would shovel the snow, and watch as I made snow angels and skated on ice puddles.

"You're father's home, honey."

This man is not my father. His face is sallow, his cheeks sunken in. His hair, an ashy gray, a thin layer atop his head. An unsmiling figure, his lip turned down, as though deep in thought. His skin, rough and chapped, like a desert in need of an oasis.

I don't play mountain climber anymore, or make snow angels. I mow the grass now, and shovel the snow.

It's terrifying, what stage three cancer can do to a person.