Day 6: What is the hardest thing you have ever experienced?

 

So on December 29th 2011, my dad passed away. But, here is why it was the hardest thing I've experienced so far. 

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a daddy's girl. 

In 2010, my dad started to get sicker by the day. It was actually really sudden. Like one day he was fine, and the next day he needs oxygen to help him breath. But little did I actually know that he was living the last couple years of his life. I think I was oblivious to that fact. Well, in September of 2010, my aunts and uncle came out to visit my dad. And at the end of their visit they informed me and my siblings that my dad was in his last year of life. Well, reality hit me then and there. They were right, and I hadn't noticed it, as if I was in some sort of denial. So I bring up this fact to my care group, in which they reply that "Nobody really knows when some one is going to die, and not to worry about it, but they will pray for his health anyways." That's when I realized they weren't going to understand at all. The only ones I had to lean on in this was my family. As the year 2011 started, he was still living at home, needing oxygen to breath, but sometimes have delusions. At first it didn't seem so bad. But then he started to get weaker. He had trouble walking. And it killed me to watch my dad start to decompose. But of course "my dad wasn't really dying" according to the people who hadn't watch this huge change in a short time. And I started to withdrawal from most people. Because they weren't going to understand at all. By April 2011, my dad was losing his memory. He even gave me a birthday card, 3 weeks early, little did I realize that was the last birthday card I would ever get from my dad, and it was the last birthday he would ever see me have. In May, he was moved to the VA hospital because it was too dangerous for him to be at home. That's when it got worse. He was delusional almost all of the time. When we would go visit him, he would always talk about how he had to get out of there and how he needed to get Gina, my sister, out of there. He felt like he was being punished, and always said stuff like " I didn't do anything wrong. Why am I here?" It was heartbreaking. We also had been informed that he didn't have much time left. I started to pray harder, for a miracle, that he'd get better, that he'd live longer, that he'd make it. But I was ignored or something because he just kept getting worse. He fell and hit his head sending him to the hospital. The VA didn't want to take him back because he was too much trouble. Because he was losing his memory and unable to walk. So he went to another place. And he seemed to like it there better. Me and my sibs made my dad a scrapbook for him, so that he might remember something. By the end of the summer he had to be moved to SLC because it was cheaper for him to be there. So me and my sibs had to have day road trips to go visit him. And by this time he didn't even recognize us very well. Its hard to describe whats it like to look at a person who should know you but they stare at you as if you were a stranger. We had to introduce ourselves almost every time we went. We even had to push him around in a wheel chair and sometimes feed him. It was depressing. By this time I realized that he wasn't going to get better, that this really was the end. But I didn't know what day that was. So every day I lived in fear that it would be that day. At this point, I prayed that my dad would at least remember who I was, his little girl, but no such luck there. I was ignored again. It was starting to affect my work life I guess, because one of my coworkers noticed that I wasn't ok. And I ended spending a lot of time after work just bawling my eyes out in his car, telling him what I was going through. And although he had no personal experience of what I was going through, he was exactly what I needed, someone to listen to me. Well, my dad, makes it to November 19th, his 62nd birthday. And I get hopeful, because he wasn't supposed to make it this long. So I thought maybe my prayers were getting answered. But no, a little while later in December he falls into a coma. We rush to the hospital. It was scary, but he was supposed to get stable. But he didn't. Things actually got worse. And we knew this really was the end. And so my life got more stressful and depressing as I woke up everyday wondering if this was his last day. And I cried to my coworker even more.Then a couple days before he died he was allowed to come home, because they knew this was the end for him, that there was nothing they could do. I saw him, just hours before he died. I got to tell him I loved him one last time. But I would have stayed longer if I had known that those were his very last moments. I got the call at 3am. My dad had died. So I had to be the one to wake up my brother and my sister to tell them. I couldn't get back to sleep. I called my work and got the next couple days off. About 12 hours after he had died I was sitting in the funeral home helping plan his funeral. It was so unreal. I saw him for the first time on January 2nd 2012 since he died. It was so hard for me to look at him. I kept expecting him to be ok, to be alive, but he wasn't. And after people found out that my dad had died, people who didn't pay attention to me when I needed them, started to tell me how sorry they were for my loss, as if they actually understood. But they didn't, because they weren't there with me when it was all happening. I actually felt more accepting to believe condolences from my clients and coworkers then from people who I had tried to talk to. His funeral took place on January 3rd 2012. I spoke at it. I read a letter that he wrote me when I was 5 and told stories of how close I was to my dad. It was really hard for me. Almost indescribable how it felt. And I've actually been unable to go back to his grave, because it will make it 100% real. I know he's not coming back, and I feel like a horrible daughter because I am not strong enough to go visit him yet. I still have dreams, that he gets better, but then I wake up and he's not. I hate those dreams, they give me false hope. They kill me. Because I know that he is not going to come back. And that's the worst feeling in the world and the hardest thing I've had to experience.