The Day My Life Changed Forever

Sunday, March 19, 2017.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and my boyfriend and I decided to spend the day together out of service in Port Renfrew, British Columbia exploring and having fun. I had no idea that my life would forever be changed when I woke up that morning to the sun shining through my window. I distinctively remember seeing the time at 11:06 that morning when I got in the car to leave. That number forever edged in my mind—also happens to be my dads birthday. I remember the day so vividly. We visited a few beaches and hiked up Avatar Grove. We collected rocks and shells that until about two weeks ago I left sitting in the corner of my bedroom, untouched since that day.

We headed back home around 4. The drive takes about an hour to get back to my house, but before I even got there, as soon as we re-entered the cell service area, my phone began buzzing. I had been getting texts all day since 11:28 AM, 22 minutes after I had left for the day. My dad's girlfriend had texted that my dad was in the hospital. I had gotten many texts like this before but for some reason I instantly started bawling and I couldn’t understand why. It was a normal thing at this point for my dad to be in the hospital, but this time I knew something was wrong.

Two weeks exactly before this day was the last time I had seen him. As I left his house that day, while walking back home to mine, I started to cry uncontrollably because I felt in my heart that was the last time I would see him. I tried to calm myself the whole way saying, "You’ll see him again, you’ll see him again," because there was no reason for me to be worried at that point as he had told me during that visit that the radiation treatment he was supposed to be getting was cancelled due to the fact that he was actually doing better than before. My intuition was right.

I arrived back at my house after reading all the texts, calmed myself down, and called my dad's girlfriend. She was distraught and I could tell instantly it was bad. She told me my dad was in the hospital and this time he probably wasn’t coming home. I fell to my knees and I honestly don’t remember what else the conversation consisted of but after we hung up, I left for the hospital. I arrived to see my dad in an induced coma. Around the same time I had left for Port Renfrew, my dad had fallen and broken almost every bone in his back and was rushed to the hospital and put on life support. No one knew in that moment how bad it really was. My dad's girlfriend told me as he was getting into the ambulance, he told her, “Remember my smokes. I don’t know how long I’ll be in there for.”

I asked the doctors if there was any hope and they told me that he might be able to pull through but he would be in the hospital and bed ridden and he would only survive for about five months. Something my dad had told me since his diagnosis was that he did not want to be on life support and that if it was his time to go for whatever reason, he didn’t want to be kept alive laying in a bed because to him, that would be worse than dying. It was my decision to keep him on life support or to shut it off. Being 18-years-old, even though I knew my dad's wishes, it was the hardest decision I ever and probably will ever have to make.

We all talked about it as a family and decided that we would take him off life support after a couple days went by and his condition got worse. In the back of my mind, I was still hoping the doctors would tell me that if I didn’t take him off, he would be able to go home in a week or two, but I knew I was just trying to convince myself of a false reality.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017.

The skies, like my heart, were filled with grey clouds and rain pouring down tremendously. I drove to the hospital with my dad's girlfriend as we knew this was the day we had to say goodbye. When I arrived, my great aunt was there already and shortly after we arrived, so did my dad's brother with his two sons. I was pulled aside and asked the question, “Have you decided to remove the life support?” I couldn’t speak. I just nodded yes and he said okay. After we removed the tube, we tried to take him out of the drug-induced coma to see if we could communicate one last time, but soon after they started, he just cried and moaned in pain. I didn’t want him to know what was going on so I told them to put him back in the coma. I was told he would only live for about an hour after we removed the tube. They were wrong. I laid beside my dad on his hospital bed holding his hand to my face while he died for 11-and-a-half hours. The one thing everyone says about my dad was that he was always a fighter and he sure was. Even after being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable bone cancer, he still would tell me that he would kick that cancer in the ass and win the fight. I sang his favourite songs and I told him my favourite memories, not knowing if he could hear me or not. Family members came in and out all day but I can barely remember anyone else there. Every time I close my eyes, I am in that room.

My dad and best friend died at 9:23 PM, March 22, 2017. That was the day my life changed forever.