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Dad Dying At A Young Age


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hi there, my name is mike im 18 years old and just thought id share my experience with everyone... when i was younger i had the best life anyone could ask for a loving mom, dad and brother, i was the happiest kid in the world untill one day me and my brother had stayed over at my grandparents house because my mom and dad had gone away to a good friends anniversary party type thing that was near a lake. they had all been drinking and having a good time when my dad, his sister and her boyfriend decided to take a floating wooden dock out in the water to jump off but this lake was realy shallow and had alot of sandbars in it so they had to go out about 100 feet or so but they were still in shallow water so they were just doing shallow dives for a while. after a bit my dad dove in and hit his head on a mound of sand which broke his neck and he died instantly. My aunt and her boyfriend didnt find out untill my dads body had drifted over and bumped into my aunts leg, she had thought he was just pulling a prank on her because he would always do this kind of stuff to ppl to get laughs but she soon realized he was dead and she had to drag his body back into shore screaming out for help the whole time... by the time they got in my mom was in shock and the whole place was in chaos, everyone running around not knowing what to do it was absolutely horrible my mom said to me. I was 6 at the time and my brother 8 and when my grandparents came down to tell us the news me and my brother had decided to have a joke and pretend we were sleeping the whole time they were trying to get us up to tell us the tragic news but after they had given up and went back updsatirs, we went up and they told us what had happened. i was too young to fully understand what was going on, the death didnt seem to bother me at all. We moved that year closer to my grandparents and family so my mom could easily get help and stuff. After that i never really talked about my dad at all i always put it off and when my friends had talked about their dads i just kept my mouth shut because i could never really express my emotions before the death so it just made it that much harder to do so. I was happy all through public school up until grade 10 where i became depressed for over a year until i couldnt bare life anymore, i actually thought of killing my self a couple times, after a while i finally opened up to my mom and i was happier than i had been all through public school with just expressing my emotions for not even that long.. ever since then i have been figuring myself out but evey now and then getting depressed but jumping back into life its weird how life works... i have just recently started looking at old pictures of the old days of me my dad and brother which brought out tons of tears i cant even count how many times ive cried over them.. its only now that i feel im really greiving my dads death and i feel more alive but i know i have a long weay to come, it scares me but also makes me happy at the same time because the main goal i have in life is to get married have children and be the best damn father anyone could ever be because i know my father was and i didnt have much time with him to even get to know him. i want them to be the happiest kids and i want my wife to be the happiest wife ever. i feel i can contribute all of my pain through out my life into something amazing.... a family.

i know this was long but i just wanted to get my story out for ppl to read maybe give some ppl hope, give me some comments tell me what u think.

and my advice i have to ppl out there who have gone through similar stuff like me, try to think deep into the future, try and think of what your life could be like if u got through your greif and were happy... its what got me through my long depression.

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Dear Mike,

Thank you for sharing your story. I am very sorry about your loss and am grateful you are doing better. I wonder so many times about what it is like for my son who's dad died when he was only 9 years old. It will be two years in May that it happened. He doesn't talk much about his dad either, but I know he missses not being able to do certain things that his friends do with their dads. I hope as he gets older, he'll be able to talk about his feelings with me. I think it must be a real hard thing to process when you are so young. Grief is complicated, as you found out in 10th grade. I worry that it will show up in my son later, also, and how do I help him now before he has bigger problems later on?

You sound very mature and I bet you will be an awesome dad someday! Keep posting and let us know how you are doing.

Take good care,

Kath

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hi Kath im deeply sorry to hear about your husband passing... death can be so sudden and it catchs us right off guard but thats just life, we have to learn how to deal with the circumstances present and doing that makes us stronger. In regards to your son.. i think the main thing that made my life hard growing up was that i felt in a way guilty to express my emotions, that i would be made fun of because ive had a hard life but now ive finally learned that its the exact opposite... letting people know about your hard times brings you closer to people. I also found out that most of my life i didn't completely know who i was because i didn't know my father too well... you should do something to help remind your son of the good times he had like make a photo album of all photos of just him and his dad so when he is feeling down he can just open that up and be reminded of them... this could be a good way for him to deal with his emotions by himself and help figure himself out, plus it makes him feel like he is not forced into to opening up... he can pick and choose when he wants to open up the album and grieve. I know if i had an album like that when i was growing up that it would have sped up my grieving so much because the photos helped me realise that he actually was gone and in order to move on i have to deal with my emotions. You could also get your son to write a letter to his dad and put it on his grave.

I hope that this will help your son through the hard journey that we call life, i wish my best to you and your son... stay strong.

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