None of us in my family will ever be the same again. Almost two weeks ago I lost my father. Saturday morning, January 20, 2007at 11:08 am my father died of a massive heart attack. He was at home when it happened, talking to my mother, spending a lazy morning still in bed, laughing, and making his jokes. One minute he's making plans to go see some more doctors and get more tests done for the terrible pains he'd been experiencing for over four months in his chest and back and the next instant he says my mother's name and then closes his eyes and slips away. How is that even possible? How could this have happened? What will we all do without him? For the last four years I have been nearly inseparable from my parents having reached an age when all I wanted to do was hang out with them and do things together. The pain and loss I feel, the overwhelming sadness, and the confusion as to how and why this happened is on my mind night and day. My father was such a great man. He was the best dad, he was a great husband and friend to my mother, and he loved us all so much. He wasn't ready to go. We didn't want him to go. We wanted more time. Dammit this absolutely sucks.
These last three weeks have been a blur. The nights are the worst. I think about my dad and I just cry and cry. I can't sleep. It is little consolation when people say "He's in a better place. God has a plan for all of us. It was his time." Yes I've heard it all. Other people have suffered this kind of loss too. But this is the first loss of its kind for me. Not the deaths of my grandparents or my beloved uncle is equal to the hole I now have in my heart. I am going to miss my daddy so much that now that I won't see him again is when I tell him every day how much I love him. I should have said it more often when he was alive. Now is when we're being told to be strong, have faith, believe in God's will. I know all of that. But it doesn't make this sadness any less or the way we lost him fade from my mind.
In coping with this enormous loss of my dad I have come to the realization that truly life is too short to be wasting it on empty dreams and prayers put in the wrong place that God can not answer because He knows they are not right for me. My father always knew what was best for me. And God as my spiritual parent also knows what is best for me. So the time has come for me to cut the lead weights from my mind and heart and start making room for new beginnings.
First, I told my ex-boyfriend, Eric, from Austin, that I didn 't see any point to continuing a "relationship" over the phone with half-assed conversations. I gave him one opportunity after another to buck up and be what I needed him to be. He didn't do it. So I've cut him loose.
I've deleted the e-mails I got from a certain someone over the past year. I've deleted his addresses from my contacts list. And now I delete him from my heart. I waited for him to come around, hoped and prayed, that maybe, just maybe he would come back to me. But no. It was not meant to be. I'm done then. Just like I chose to love him once now I choose to cut him loose. He doesn't deserve my love and I will not give out now. I don't regret meeting him. But I learned my lesson and now I am moving on.
I've deleted someone else too. Someone who once made me cry in the middle of a crowded bar and who has never been a good friend anyway. Gone. Cut loose. I am tearing these people out of my life because I refuse to hand over to them any more of my energy and time.
I will keep my one Michael has a friend. FRIEND. Because though I meant what I said when I told him I loved him I also knew that it would be the beginning of the end. I choose to love him but now only as my friend.
I am facing my own mortality. And I have to choose how I live my life from here on out. I choose to keep close to me those people who I truly value and who truly value me. Somewhere my daddy is looking down on me from heaven and probably discovering things about me he never knew. But I know he would be proud of the decisions I am now taking and that I am finally all grown up.
Good-bye daddy. I love you and will miss you horribly. But death is not the end. We will be together again one day. Sleep and dream of all of us.
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