The Day My Dad Died

It was Wednesday night. I heard the crying from my room. I knew who it was coming from: my father. We had found out not even a full year ago that he had stage three colon cancer. Within the year, he had a few surgeries and it had spread to his liver. His crying kept me up. My mom walked to my door. “Emily, your father is having a rough night, I don't think he’s going to make it much longer. Why don't you go in and tell him you love him?”

I stayed quiet I remember laying on my bed thinking, This isn't the end. He’s going to live through this and get better. His crying interrupted my thoughts. God, please just end his suffering, I can't stand to see him like this. Will you either heal him completely or just take him to be with you? I don't want him to suffer anymore on this earth. I started crying while praying. I finally fell asleep to his pain-filled moans.

It felt like I had just fallen asleep when my mother came to wake me. She seemed frantic. “I called the paramedics, he’s not doing well. Go in and talk to him.” I didn't. I don't remember why I didn't go into the living room to see my father. I think it’s because I hated to see him suffering so much.

I remember when the paramedics got to the house, I hid away in my room. I came out to the hallway and was shocked to see my dad laying on a gurney. They had to move his head into the hallway so that they could get it out the door. I froze in my place. I hardly remember my mom telling me that my Aunt Peggy was there and she would be following the ambulance to the hospital. I got into her car. The only thing I could picture was my dad’s nearly lifeless face laying on the gurney, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were distant. When we got to the hospital, my papaw, aunt, and uncle were already there. I wouldn’t leave the waiting room or his room the whole time.

I took my mom’s cell phone and started calling everyone in her contacts. It being around 6:30 in the morning, I left a bunch of voice mails. I remember calling a woman that I had just met two months before at Acquire the Fire, a church event. She didn’t answer yet. I went back to be with my mother and father. I sat on my mom’s lap. I remember my Papaw and Step-grandma Sherry saying that we should sit in the waiting room, so I followed them and sat down absentmindedly watching the TV. I remember Sherry drinking coffee, though she wasn’t my dad’s mom, she had known him all his life. I also remember a woman coming into the waiting room. She was there for someone who had gotten into either a bad car wreck or a fire, but I know they were severely burned. After a while, I walked back into Emergency Room E5 and stood at the door. My Aunt Peggy asked if I wanted to go with her to get some breakfast and her son Matthew. I declined her offer just knowing that if I had left, something bad would happen. By this time, my grandparents were already back into room E5, and so I joined them. I looked around. My dad’s brother in the chair by the door, my papaw standing in the corner with my grandma, my dad’s sister standing on the opposite side of the room and bed from where I was sitting on my mom’s lap. I was holding my dad’s had, though he wasn't really holding it back. My brother left with Peggy shortly after she asked me to go. My mom had insisted I go with them, but I just couldn’t leave my dad.

They had only been gone for about ten minutes when he died. I counted down to his last breaths starting at ten, then restarting from the next lowest number when it didn’t happen. I got down to three. I started to cry. His sister said “He’s gone.” That was the second time that I had ever seen my Papaw cry. The first was when his first wife had died just seven years prior. After a few moments, I went into the hallway with my mom’s phone and called my best friend first. Well, I called her mom’s phone, and when her mother answered, I told her crying about what had happened. I finished calling everyone and leaving voicemails if they didn't answer and crying on the phone with those who did. Tami, the woman I met at Acquire the Fire, answered this time and talked with me for a while. I remember pacing in the bathroom outside of room E5 talking with her. She was a huge help to calming me down. All of a sudden, my brother came back telling me that someone was there for me. I walked out of the automatic doors into the main waiting room out of the ER, and as soon as they opened, I saw Abbie. I cried even harder and her swollen eyes indicated that she had been crying as well. I slammed into her crying and hugging her. She had to go downstairs to a babysitting seminar and had to leave shortly after, but her dad sat there with my brother and me talking about how he felt when his father had died when he was a kid. I listened, but not fully. I just wanted to get home and not be anywhere. The only thought I had running through my mind was: He’s dead. My father is dead. He’s gone. He’ll never come back. I vaguely remember going home and telling my neighbor that he was gone, then sitting with my family in my living room talking. I just sat there. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to feel. I was just thirteen.