This Friday I turn fifteen years old. Today my older sister turns 18. My father died yesterday in his hospital room. He was diagnosed with cancer around five years ago. Luckily my dad beat the cancer and got a bone-marrow transplant. He improved over time, but experienced several close encounters with death. My father's lungs were weakened and damaged greatly because the bone-marrow transplant caused his brother's blood to fight with his own (like it should). However, he got another disease of his lungs which covered his lungs in scar tissue. Unlike our lungs, which are elastic-like and stretch to fill with air, my father's became too stiff with scar tissue. In the last week of August, my mother rushed him to the hospital at midnight because he could no longer breath, but was rather gasping for air. The doctors put him on a ventilator. At first I didn't think too much of it. I thought it was just another one of his episodes, and he would recover within a week or two. I was wrong. They sent him via helicopter to his main, and preferred hospital, which is one of the best in the country. When I visited my dad and saw him on the ventilator, it really hit me that he might not come home. He was sedated with the ventilator breathing for him. Over eleven IVs were in him to sustain my father. I found it increasingly difficult. We thought he would recover, but the doctors told us there was nothing more to keep him alive in the long term because the steroids no longer controlled my father's GVHD (graft-versus-host disease). On Sunday, we visited my dad. He was not on sedation, but was so weak the most we could communicate through him was through his eye movement and head movement (of which was little). He nodded his head when we asked him if he wanted to come off the ventilator. We first planned he would come off the machine and be shipped to our home for hospice, where he would die. However, he was too weak and we waited with him through the night. I am please I was able to say goodbye, and tell my dad everything i've ever wanted to tell him. He died at age 57 yesterday in the late morning. I was not there. Now I am in another dilemma. I know there are different stages of grief. I'm pretty sure I already experienced the shock. I felt numb, sad and lifeless. I cried harder than I had in years yesterday. I don't like to cry about emotion things in front of my family, so i hold in my sad feelings until I'm alone. Now I am in denial. I still think my dad is at work, or simply at the hospital still. Even though my mind knows what is true, my emotions do not fully match how I know I should feel. Instead, i feel confused. I cried yesterday when I was in my dad's car by myself, but since then I have barely shed a tear. I can't seem to process the fact that my dad is no longer going to talk to me on the phone, or take me to my soccer games. It's the worst feeling in the world to feel like you should be crying, and to WANT to cry, but not be able to because your mind is so confused over the recent events. Could someone please help me here?
It's like every time I start to cry or tear up about my dad I stop because I feel this emptiness instead. I feel the stress of the situation building up, but I cannot release it no matter how much I think about my dad. I just feel emptier.