Death...

Grief comes in the most unexpected waves… and time waits for no one.

It struck me almost like an unexpected snore when I’m fighting sleep and refuse to believe I’ve lost that battle.

One minute he was there… the next he wasn’t.

My father was my protector. I didn’t have to be bold and always prepared to defend myself because he was my first line of defense. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2001 I had no idea how quick the disease would remove him from my life. The diagnosis didn’t stop him from smoking his cigarettes, though. He persisted with killing the temple God blessed him with all the way until he couldn’t hold them himself or even talk to ask somebody else to.The last month of his life was spent on hospice, in home care right across the hall from my bedroom. I had to step up and help administer his meds just about everyday throughout the last two years of his life. I helped my mother make sure he was fed and when she went to church on Sundays I stayed with him so he wouldn’t be alone.

For a while I blamed myself for his death… kind of ridiculous now that I think about it. What could I have done to change his actions and his mind to treat his body better? I think the biggest battle I fought with those thoughts, was imagining a world where he loved me so much he stopped smoking… so it was me. It had to be me. Forget the fact that he was a grown man, in his 50s, with a wife, 5 kids, and, from what I hear, a horrible attitude. HE wasn’t changing his ways for anyone, and that wasn’t something I could affect a change in.

He went strong for almost two years…

The month leading up to him leaving, he lost his strength, mobility in just about all of his body, and eventually his speech. August 23, 2003 came around and the world literally was silent… but at the same time it was so noisy.

He was having a hard time breathing, my mother kept calling Hospice but they couldn’t do anything. By the 4th or 5th phone call they finally sent someone to the house to check him out. My mother, my oldest sister, my nephew, and I were home. My middle sister was away at school, but as soon as she found out he was getting worse she hopped on a bus home. They gathered the four of us in the dining room to let us know he was no longer breathing as a healthy person would through their lungs and was now breathing through his esophagus (don’t quote me on this I was 12 and I’m not a doctor, terminology may be off). They already knew this from the calls she kept making, but there was nothing to be done; he was leaving us. An ambulance was on the way to transport him to the hospital.

My mother told my six-year old nephew and I to say our good-byes, and to understand even though he couldn’t say “I love you” back he could hear us and he definitely shared the sentiment. They carried him down the stairs and out the door…

I never saw my father again…

Mom went to the hospital with him in the ambulance and a few neighbors followed behind to give as much support as they could. Sis stayed home with the kids and was tasked with keeping us calm. I’m not sure what time they left, but I remember sitting in the bottom half of our split level house, waiting and suddenly feeling a shortness of breath and chill pass through me. I looked and the clock read 5:02PM. I think within the hour I looked out the window from my seat on the couch and saw moms legs walking up through the yard… I ran up the stairs to the front door as I yelled, “Mommy’s back,” through the house.

I opened the door…
Looked at her face…
Fell to my knees…
I knew he was gone.

Tears flooded my eyes like the dam breaking in X-Men when Jean saved the team and sacrificed herself in an extraordinary act of heroism. I wasn’t a hero, though. I was just a little girl who felt the pain rip through her spirit with unspoken words and a bountiful knowledge of death. I knew it like it became a part of the family. My grandmother, my favorite cousin, and a great uncle the year before… my grandfather a few years before that. Death became a part of my life…

She told us about their arrival at the hospital. They admitted him to a room and told her she had to go check in downstairs. After running downstairs she was told there was nothing for her to do, so she went back up only to be redirected to the front desk downstairs again. Before heading back down she went into his room, just to let him know she’d be right back. When she looked at him, she knew he was already gone.

The doctors pronounced his death at 5:02PM.

I cried for a short period of time, and didn’t cry again until my mother held a memorial service in October for him, my grandmother who passed the year before, and my great aunt who passed a couple weeks after him. I walked into the church and had to accept the reality that my life no longer included these people.

I was a quiet, shy, timid little girl… and my protection was gone. That reality stung like the burn you get from touching the stove after you’ve already been told not to because you’ll hurt yourself. Who would willingly choose to feel this type of pain?

The worst part of the pain is thinking of all the things he’ll never be able to do: hold me and tell me everything will be okay; meet my future husband; walk me down the aisle; hold my children…

My father was many things… a saint was not one of them. But in times like this, all I want is to be able to talk to him, hug him. Most of the time I can barely remember what his voice sounded like… or what his face looked like.

I was 12 when my father lost his battle to lung cancer. 15 years later and I still suffer from that loss. The older I get the more I discover about him and my emotional state shifts.

It hurts… but it’s okay to feel the pain. What you do after the pain sets in is what really matters, though. How will you transform that pain into something positive and progressive? How will you let it help you be better, do better, require better? If you’ve loss someone close to you, think of what they’d want for your life if they were still here and imagine they’re looking over you praying that you do whatever you need to do to make it there.

Right now, the pain is numbing, but in a few days… this too shall pass.

Be D.O.P.E. and keep your loved ones in your prayers.