Farewell Dad...

Take everything I wrote about my mother, and multiply it by a thousand.

This week, my father suddenly passed away.   I was laying on my bed, watching the final “Twilight” movie, when my brother Joey called me and said, “Dad is in an ambulance on his way to the hospital, he had a seizure and a heart attack, his brain was without oxygen WAY too long, and they don’t think he’s gonna make it.”

I instantly flipped out, yelling, “Oh my god Joe, don’t tell me that, don’t tell me that!”  I felt like I was in a horrible nightmare, and I was praying to GOD I was gonna wake up!  Still do, every day.

After a day on life support, and getting phone call after phone call, saying “His organs are shutting down, his pupils are unresponsive, only his heart is barely functioning, and only because of the medication being provided”…..    He passed away.  

My Dad was my best friend, my adviser, my protector, and my safety in this world.   The ONE person I could turn to when the world was unkind, and always find comfort and support.  His home was my only real home, and it has all been yanked out from under me like a rug.   I am so overwhelmed by grief, I can barely function.  Barely write.   

BOTH OF MY PARENTS IN 5 MONTHS!

Do you know what its like to feel as though the only 2 people in the world who ever loved you with all their hearts are gone?   How it feels to know that if anything goes wrong in your life from now on, there is no place you can take refuge from it?  

Don’t get me wrong, I adored both my parents.  But my Dad and I were ESPECIALLY close.  I was his baby.   

And the worst part was…   I was too far away to make it out there when he passed away, so I didn’t even get to attend the funeral, or take part in getting any keepsakes of him from his home.  I simply did not have the money to fly home, and I asked around, but nobody had any to loan or contribute. 

The only thing I can be thankful for is that it was just a small ceremony with a few people.   But in the Spring, we will be planning a BIG memorial, to give the whole family and all our friends time to save up and travel out there to attend it.   

My sister and my brother keep telling me "Its better that you didn't see him on life support, you should have happy memories of him."  But still, I wanted to be there.  

Dad as an honored U.S. Army veteran, (Special Forces, AKA “Green Beret”.   His ashes were laid to rest in the ground in a VA cemetery in northern California.   He received a full honors burial.  My brother did get it all on film for me, and I am awaiting the file.   But for now, I have made this special video honoring him, and showing how I feel.  I used clips and photos of Dad.  Clips of various music groups singing the song “In The Living Years”, and also clips of a full honors military funeral (Not Dad’s but very nice).  I pieced it all together with a “In The Living Years” music track by Mike And The Mechanics.   I would like to share it here:

I’ll be honest, it will most likely take me YEARS before I will be able to function normally after this…   I just wish something great would come along in my life to make me feel like I still have something valuable in this world.   Because right now, I feel like I don’t at all.   I feel very alone. 

After I get paid (I make a few hundred dollars online), I will fly out to Dad’s house and retrieve the rest of my belongings.   I guess maybe I can put them in a storage facility.  I don’t know what I’m gonna do now though.   Where I will live.  Where I will work, or what I will do with my life.   I’m not married.  Don’t have any kids.  No place of my own to speak of…   I just don’t know what to do.  I know I need a job, but that is gonna be hard to get considering I have very little experience and no real training at anything.   I just want a happy relationship, a stable place to live and hope for a good future.   Hopefully that will come along soon.   Right now, I just need a place to lay low and grieve my way through the toughest part of this.