Father's Day Purge

This is certain to be a long and depressing post. I am having a bit of a breakdown this morning. I woke up not realizing what today is. I went to run some errands and heard on the radio that it is father's day and it hit me like a ton of bricks (great momism I think I will continue using with my child as in "if you don't bring home at least a 3.5 I am going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.") but I digress. Today is my first father's day since my dad died.

Last fall on October 8th, my 26th birthday, Davey who was my boyfriend at the time threw me a big party at his house. All of my friends were there and we had a blast. Drinking, eating, dancing and general merriment. I was pretty much shit-canned when I heard my phone ringing at about 10:00 and saw it was my mom, who is never awake at 10:00. I tried to sound sober when I answered and I knew something was wrong. She said that my step-mother had called her (which is even stranger) and that my dad had a minor stroke and was in the hospital. As my father and I have always had a difficult relationship I was more irritated than anything but knew I needed to go to the hospital to check things out. It was amazing to me that Davey heard the conversation, kicked everyone out, started the car and was ready to go before I even got off the phone.

We pulled up to the ER and found my stepmother there and she said that I could go see him. I went in and it was awful. His face was all contorted and his arm was twitching. He couldn't open his eyes but I told him I was there and I told him that I loved him. And he said "I love you too sweetheart." Those were his last words. In that instant he went into a seizure and was pronounced brain dead within 20 min.

He was only 58 years old. He was packing for a backpacking trip when it happened. He wasn't fat. He didn't drink or smoke. He just had a bad vein in his brain.

We had to wait 12 hours for a second opinion. Davey didn't leave my side for even a moment. I called my mother, told her that she had to come, even though she couldn't stand to be in the same room as him. She spent 27 years of her life with him, and he deserved to have her say goodbye. I called our pastor. I sent desperate text messages to all my friends. I went into the ICU and could not believe that this man whom most of the time I despised, yet loved so much, who still had rippeling muscles and a deep tan was going to die.

We finally took him off life support as he was bleeding internally anyway and left. I gave the eulogy, cried for days and tried to sort things out.

The blessing of the whole nightmare is that I really realized that David was the person I wanted to marry. He took the same time off work as I did, not wanting to leave me alone, went through everything with me. Just propped me up. Less than 2 months later we got married and now our baby girl will be born in a few short weeks. My only regret is that Dad never got to meet my husband and will never know his grandaughter. I am grateful for the healing though, my mother is picking me up in awhile to go to the cemetary, something I never thought she would want to do.

As much as we never understood each other. I love you Dad, and I appreciate everything you did to push me to be a successful person. I just hope that I see a part of you in my daughter's eyes.


Something more cheerful later on.