Life Without Daddy

[Wrose99]

My dad passed away last Wednesday. I think i have finally accepted it, but it still hurts. Let me give you alittle backgroud so you can understand. I just turned 27 at the end of April and i still live at home with my parents. I had decided to commute to college when i turned 18. The summer before my senior year in college my dad got sick. He had a really bad staff infection and found out he had diabetes. We got him better, but our realationship was forever changed. During his 3 months of recovery i had become the primary breadwinner. My mom has always been a stay at home mom. Everything seemed to go back to normal except the change away from parent child into him being my bestfriend. I continued to live at home because deep down i think i knew that something else would happen. Then three years ago a week before Thanksgiving a virus attacked my dad's heart. We were able to once again get him better, but i always lived in fear of it happening again. The next year my dad had a stroke that left him with 10% feeling on one side of his body. My dad still continued to work and do everything like he always did. Our realationship continued to be something that i counted on to be always there. Like in January the day i lost my job when i got home i was estatic when i saw that my dad was home. I remember sitting between my mom and dad watching tv and knowing everything would be alright. Then midmarch this year my dad started having congestive heart failure. After tests they determined that high blood pressure had enlarged all parts of his heart. The doctor also found that my dad had been born with a hole in his heart (arial septum). The high blood pressure was caused by an artery that runs through his liver was 65% clogged. They brought his blood pressure down with medicine and were going to do three seperate surgeries, but that everything was fixable. The week after my birthday my dad went in to have an artery unclogged. From that day on he had better coloring than he has had in a long time and he was thinking more clearly. We started making lots of plans for the future. Then last Wednesday i sat and talked with him for a while like normal, then went over to my bestfriends house. Not even half an hour later i received the altime dreaded call. Aparently right after i left my dad went to lay down for a nap and never got a chance to close his eyes. I know he went the way he always wanted fast at home, but i still miss him. I remember looking at all the pictures that i had pulled from our albums on the day of his funeral and thinking he can't be gone. I also know that since March i have repetitively told him exactly what i thought of him and said all those things that i needed to say. Now i have my mom to think about and i want to make sure i do the right thing by both of us. I just hope that this story can help someone that may have the same problem as my dad possibly beat the odds. The hardest part his determining what feelings are associated with what hat i had with my dad, i had several of them.

[daddy's little girl]

I'm so sorry for your loss. My father passed away three months ago. What helps me, is crying. So if you need to cry (doesn't matter where), then do it. It's starting to sink in, that my father is gone. But as long as you have the memories, that will comfort you. Do not have any regrets about what you should have said or done. I pray that you and your mom have the strength to get through this. Love one another and keep the memories close. This will be the first time for me to celebrate Father's Day and his birthday (birthday June 26th) without him. I will keep you both in my prayers.

[Wrose99]

That is interesting, my dad's birthday is June 25th. Thank you for your words. What makes this whole situation so much more difficult now is my bestfriend's mother in law was in an accident today and they do not know if she will make it. I got the call from my bestfriend at the exact moment that my dad passed away last Wednesday. I felt torn in two directions: being with my mom or being with my bestfriend. I chose the one that needed me the most. This now makes me scared that next Wednesday another close friend will lose a parent. Thank you again for your words.

[tattoodlb]

I'm sorry for your loss. It is truly amazing how when our parents are alive, we sort of take them for granted. I had not ever really thought about dying until I lost my mom in Aug 03, I had not thought about anyone dying at all until I lost my stepfather.... My story is way, way, way too sad, even for me sometimes. I don't know how I get through each day. I lost my stepfather on Thanksgiving 2002, right after dinner. Massive heart attack. I lost my nephew of 4 months to SMA on Christmas 2002, and then my mom. I have been asking myself "What is the point?" for many months now. Finding the reason to keep plugging away when it will end eventually. Somehow it feels like a cruel joke that we work like dogs to have money to have a decent life and then it's over. I just don't get it. Maybe I never will. I find myself sadder at this point in my life. I find that I have more sympathy for people and I stop to do more nice things than ever before. I let someone get out into traffic in front of me, I hold doors for people, I generally want to be nicer. I guess I want my life to mean something, I want to make a difference, like my mom made a difference with me. I am 36, and my mom most likely committed suicide, but we don't know because the State Medical Examiner's Office lost her blood samples...so we don't know how she really died. That really hurts the most, the not knowing. The wondering what really happened that morning that the police found her in her apartment on the floor. Only God knows I think. Grief is a funny thing, some days are OK, other days I think about my mom constantly and I am on the verge of a massive tear fest.

Anyway, I know this is long and I know how you are feeling with the loss. There is a space in my heart where my mom used to stay and her memory fills it, but memories are very light; like angels and sometimes I feel her with me and sometimes I feel her angel with me so that I am not alone with this.

Thank you.

[Wrose99]

I feel your pain. I am lucky to have a legacy and two promises to keep me going. The center of my universe has always been my parents house. I am 27 and still live at home. Part of that is to make sure that all my dad's wishes are met. My dad's will was not as up to date as he wished it was, but in the end it is all working out. By staying at home my sibblings couldn't sell the house out from under me. Going back to the legacy and promises let me tell you the story about the land i have always lived on. My great grandpa and a few of his friends bought 2 acres of land out in the middle of nowhere in the 1890's for use as a gun club. After my grandpa got back from WWII he bought everyone out and owned the land. Then in the early 1970's they were having problems with teenagers vandalizing the clubhouse, so my parents bought land on one side of the "Club Grounds" and ended up building a house later. When the house was halfway done my grandpa asked me and my brother's to make sure all the land and the house stayed in the family, i was the only one that gave him my promise. My grandpa passed away a week later. Not too long ago i made the same promise to my dad. The legacy is the land. Now what keeps me going on those bad days is i know i can go home to this land so rich in my own heritage. Sometimes i feel that my dad is still with me, sometimes it's just a smell, other times it's the feeling that someone just sat on my bed. I know my dad is in a better place and that my job now is to give my mom and myself the security and retirement that he was never able to obtain.

Everyone has a purpose, mine was easy to determine, but other's aren't. Your purpose could be as simple as my dad's was, being good to himself, his family and helping anyone that needed help with any information or manual work that needed done. During my dad's furneral is was described as a "Hometown Boy" he was born and died in the same city. He never did anything that made him famous, but he touched peoples lives in such a way that many people that couldn't get around very well showed up at his visitation and had tears in their eyes. That i believe is what life is about. Touching people's lives if only for a second, because that second could mean alot to the other person. Be good to yourself and don't be afraid to reach out to your friends and loved one's for a shoulder when needed.

[Penny]

I am so sorry about your loss. I said a prayer for you to find peace in the midst of your despair. I recently lost both my mother and my brother. I know the unbearable pain.