cathycnyrs

Josie, I so understand the reliving it part. I can't remember any other day seven months ago or two months ago, whatever... but something makes me want to remember the lost peices of that day. And some parts are so clear that they replay like a movie in my head, especially late at night and early in the morning when I am alone with my thoughts. I sleep with the tv a lot, I guess trying not to be totally alone in my thoughts. I've never really been close to my Dad's family. We moved a couple of hours away from them when I was a child and the rest of them have still lived pretty close to each other. A couple of years ago a cousin moved close to us. My Dad started visiting and all of the family that lived two hours away started coming out this way. The day my Dad died, my cousin was at the house before the coroner was. Since then he has become like a brother to me and has been going to my mother's usually weekly to do chores, things she can't do. It has started being Monday every week, they spend the day together and then my sister and me and my child meet them for dinner out. This cousins dad is one of my Dad's surviving brothers and now me and my uncle have just started calling each other. He called and a few months later I called and now we talk. My mother talks to his other siblings and I know the other brother gets upset everytime they talk, so they don't talk much. I really have a desire to bond with these people that are familiar to me because of the traits and characteristics of my Dad that are familiar, but in all honesty they have been strangers to me most of my life. My cousin has become a brother to me and my sister, the one we never had. I know it is going to take work to keep it going. I also know it is a two way street. I am going to try and pick up that phone and get to know these people. I found a paper plate layed on my kitchen counter after the family left the day after the service from my uncle, the one that I has probably had the hardest time. I have wanted to call and haven't. I know I need to. A year and a half ago all my Dad's siblings were living. Their mother died at 94 about 10 years ago. A year before my Dad died, a brother died, 6 months later another, then my Dad. Three in one year and two days. I have spent long nights on the phone with my mother about these people, about my parents courtship, and I really want to find out more and know I need to write it down to keep it from fading from my memory. I fear it won't be many years before they started dying off one by one. When I have talked to my cousin and uncle, we really haven't talked about him as much as we have just talked. I was drawn to that uncle at the Christmas party and he knew so much about me, my kid, my house and my job. He looks so much like my Dad and it was almost like having a piece of him back for a moment. I guess what I'm saying is if these folks pull back from me, I want to make it happen. I want to know them and I know that is going to take some work. My advise is call them, and don't go for the deep conversation if they can't handle it. I have to admit I need to pick that phone up because there are 2 brothers and 3 sisters living and I have only talked with the one brother myself, the one that made it easy on me. I also got a new computer right after my Dad died. I really wanted one that could do fabulous things with pictures. I got a great scanner, printer and so forth. I have borrowed pictures from my mother and other family, scanned them made copies and returned them. I sometimes cry my eyes out looking at the photos but I know I'm blessed to have them. I also didn't get a chance to say goodbye. I guess that wasn't in God's plan. Part of me feels in my heart that I've said goodbye in months since then. I feel that I've talked to him daily and he just knows. I also feel he was in the room with me at work the moment my mother called and he was also in the house with her and my child. I think I knew his spirit was already somewhere else because when they told me they were doing CPR I knew it wasn't going to bring him back. My cousin on my mother's side told me that she wrote a letter to her Dad that she had read at the funeral and I thought, I could never do that. The morning of the funeral I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and grabbed a notepad and wrote a letter that was read at my Dad's funeral. It just fell on the paper. I know your mother's funeral was 9 months ago, but that letter brought me a lot of peace. I pull it out and read it sometimes. It was between me and him. I know he heard every word and probably helped me write it that morning. I even buried a copy with him. Writing down our feelings helps sort it out. I don't believe it is too late to say goodbye or too late to tell her anything you want her to know. Sometimes I feel if I had ever asked my Dad how he would have wanted to die he would have said in his sleep. I know he was worried he would have a stroke and be like a friend of his and a vegetable for years and years. I still ask why it happened like it happened, but I know the answer is it was his time. I'm still trying to make sense of it all and I'm sure it never will make sense. She lives on in you and her spirit is with you. God bless you.

Thanks everyone. I think I have learned throughout life, that there are circumstances that you really find out who your friends are. I lost a few, so called friends during my divorce six years ago and haven't missed them a bit. I had a few friends that were close but became family during that time. I had a guy friend who was married and lived in another state, we had hung around during our single days. He called a few weeks after my seperation and I told him what happened and he yelled to his wife to pack her bags they were taking a trip. I was in such bad shape, his family came up six weekends in a row that summer. I had another girlfriend that was married and lived 2 hours away and she started calling at 9am everyday and somedays I didn't want to get out of bed and just hung up. She would get in the car and drive down and beat on the door until I let her in. She and her husband bought my daughter school clothes and Christmas that year. My husband had let me quit my long term job to do a home based business and left with another woman two weeks later. I called her as soon as I could the day my Dad died and she pulled up before the coroner... she lives 20 minutes away now. She dropped her life for a week, my daughter spent that first night with her while I spent the night with my mother. The guy and his wife out of state, made it for the funeral... although he had just started a new job. I knew they would be there, no matter what... it was a given. I also remember during that time my so called friends implying that my divorce was my fault, and even if that had been the case it wasn't supportive friend behavior. Some people are shallow and self centered and really don't want to be around anyone that isn't on the top of the world and I'd love to be on top of the world all the time, but life sucks sometimes. Love me when I'm pitiful or don't love me at all. I sometimes think, well if it happened to them they would understand... but, then again I think some people do just get over it... they don't care that much or feel as deeply as I do and I wouldn't change being me for the world and if that means I hurt deeper, it also means I love deeper.

I've been reading a lot of the posts and wish I had came here months ago. I've also heard the get over it. I HAD a friend at work that had the nerve to say that a few months ago the day I had a panic attack at work. My Dad was 72 in great health. He walked a mile or two almost everyday. He had been working on my car that week and couldn't figure out what was going on with it, and we finally took it to a mechanic two days before IT happened. He also cut my grass that week. I was a 41 year old Daddy's girl. My parents keep my daughter who is 11 when school is out. It happened on a Saturday. I'm a mail carrier and I dropped her off at their house at 7:30 am. The night before I was at the hospital with my ex and my daughter, his great aunt had had a stroke and was not expected to make it. That woman was like a grandmother to me for many years, she was 87. I had cried on the way to work. I had went outside to smoke with a co-worker at about 9am and was crying then. I went back to case mail and was inside my case for about 2 minutes when the phone rang... and I knew what the call was... I had dreamed this phone call several times over the past year. It was my mother who never called me in the office, especially never in the morning. It was 9:14 am. She said, I hate to tell you like this but I think your Daddy's dead. I said have you called 911? She said, yes they are on their way... you need to get here Valerie (my daughter) is still asleep, you have got to get here and then she asked me to call my sister and I said I can't and I took off running through the post office with 50 or so people looking on. I was screaming and shaking and slid on my knees into my bosses lap. I was hysterical and I don't remember alot of it. I kept screaming I can't drive someone has to take me and a supervisor did take me to the house and I knew that it was true. I called my sister in the car and she didn't answer and called back moments later screaming. I got to the house and we had to park 1/2 way down the drive and I ran 200 feet to the ambulance and looked inside. A police officer met me at the door and said he was still warm and they were doing CPR. I knew he was gone. My mother was worried about my daughter and wanted to keep her asleep and she was asleep in the room across from him and I could see his feet from the door. I opened the door and she asked what was going on and I told her the paramedics were there doing CPR. I took her our of the room where she wouldn't see his feet and by the time we came back into the livingroom my sister and her kids were standing there lined up. I walked outside and then the fireman called us in and said they would be stopping CPR (I was petrified we were fixing to drive to the hospital and he was gone... I knew that... in my heart I knew). My sister freaked, me and my mother said ok and we had to explain to her he was gone. They probably worked him about an hour and a half, although I lost sense of time. This is what I relive over and over again. Mainly the phone call at the office and me losing it. I don't think I've ever lost it in my lifetime. It is the time I don't remember that haunts me and as time passes I remember little things, like a co-worker kneeled behind me rubbing my back or seeing a face on the way out the door. I'm on anti-depressants and not quite so weepy, however I want to spend days off in bed. I want to hybernate. My mother is doing better than I would have thought. I have a new sense of responsibility to her now. We are getting along for the first time in my life. She says we've always fought so much because we are so much alike. Me and my Dad only argued about my attitude towards her. I have great friends. The "friend" that said get over it... well I have since distanced myself. I'm getting through it. But, I still hurt. My daughter has emotional spurts. He was a Dad to her. She took trips all across the country with my folks and they have helped me raise her. My best friend, I work with... came in the building as they took me out one door she came in another and someone told her my Dad died and she said no it is the Aunt. They said no it is her Dad. She pushed the girl and called her a liar, and said he was at my house yesterday. Then she turned and saw another friend of mine crying and she fainted. My boss got her out of there and convinced her to go to me. We had traded car keys (long story) and I had my Dad's car... she fell apart again knowing she was going to have to drive his car. She saw all of the emergency personell and called me from the end of the driveway and it was at the exact moment that the fireman said they were going to stop CPR and I clicked the phone and hung up on her. I did call her as soon as I could and she had driven home. SHe came back and took my daughter for a little while. The night before this happened. I had called my Dad at 9:05 to tell him about the Aunt and ask if he and my mother would come to the funeral with me (being on the inlaw side) and he said, she may be ok. I said she will either die or be a vegetable. He said, she would want that and of course they would go and we talked an hour. My sister called five minutes after I did and talked to him an hour. The next few days my mother and I kept saying, she can't die (the Aunt) until we get Daddy buried. She waited til the next Thursday. I saw her grow old though. I never really saw my Dad grow old. Sometimes I think I haven't had time to really grieve her because of my Dad dying at that moment. My daughter lost two very important people that week. It's been 7 months, sometimes it is like yesterday and sometimes it feels like longer. My emotions have traveled places I never knew they could go. I'm comforted reading these posts and knowing I'm not the only one feeling these feelings and hurting the way I am.