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Monday May 12,2008

I feel like I'm 5 again

by Sleepy4150

My dad started getting sick when I was about 14 years old. I remember his first heart attack. I also remember when they told him he would never get off the oxygen tank. But more importantly, I remember before he was sick, and that's what I cling to now.

Every year my Daddy sold his Christmas vacation back to the company to be able to buy us all gifts. He worked at least 5 days a week no matter what. I didn't see him near as much as I wanted to, but when I did it was GREAT! I could not have asked for a better parent. He loved me unconditionally. He had a way of making all 6 of us each feel as if we were his favorite.

My dad played frisbee with us in the back yard. He taught me how to count and how to play fair. He taught me that life isn't fair, and I shouldn't expect it to be. My dad was my history teacher, my religious advisor, my mechanic, my doctor, my friend,a grandparent to my 3 kids, a Vietnam vet and a score of other things too.

My dad was diagnosed with COPD about 10 years ago. COPD is a fatal lung disease that devastates it's victims. You can slow it's wrath, but it always claims you in the end. I watched my dad deteriorate from a strong happy man, to a weak, sad, alcoholic, regretful person. I never lost respect for him and I never will. I will never know what it must have felt like to die that way.

I feel like I'm five again. I feel like an orphan. I still have my mother, but she only makes me bitter. She has slowly, but surely erased every memory of my Daddy from their house. When I call her for support, she changes the subject.

I will never forget the last time I saw him. I wanted to take him out driving because I had just gotten my license. But he insisted on driving. He took me all around town. We talked for hours. He apologized for everything he felt he had done wrong as a parent and a person. We had the best heart to heart and settled everything between us. He was happy. I was clueless. I never thought of it as a goodbye. I just thought of it as an old guy trying to get into heaven. Every Daddy is immortal, right?

Three months later, I made plans to visit him again. He lived a few states away. I had been holding the plans off because my kids and I kept passing this stupid virus around. I told the kids that if we went to see him when we were sick and he caught it, that he could die from it because of how sick he was already. I didn't want to be the one who did that. I was leaving on Friday to make the drive. He caught the stomach flu on Monday, and died before the week was over. He knew I was coming. He left me anyway.

It's the circle of life. Even though I was already a mom, it's really sunk in now that I'm the grown up. I don't wanna be. I feel like I'm 5 again. It's the first day of school, I've been left there alone. I have no guidance and no idea where to go for it. I'm alone, and I feel like I will be forever. I love you, Daddy. I wish you were here. It sucks that you're gone.

I am a 28 year old woman who feels like a 5 year old abandoned little girl. I have a hard time remembering why it is I get out of bed every day when I know my daddy is gone forever.