Things are not always what they seem.
Neither are people.

These amoung others ar ethe notable things I have learned through out the process of the death of my father.

I wen to see him on April 4th, I arrived at the hospital around 5 pm. By 8 pm the decision was made to shut off all the machines supporting his life. By 11:20pm I was saying my final goodbyes. That was it. 9 years of anger, heart ripping sadness, guilt, mistrust, fear, joy, recovery, and healing. Gone.

Everything was gone.

I was so angry and heart broken I sobbed for about 30 minutes by his bedside. Beside the body that used to belong to a man I so loved, and so feared. I was holding his hand when he left me. For good. I watched his heart rate drop. I watched his breathing become more laboured. Then I felt him die. I knew he was gone. They came in a listened to his chest. nothing. They reached over and shut off the monitors. He was gone. I am truly now, the girl without a father. My identity has not changed, it has only altered to a new state of being.

We celebrated him on Saturday, the 13th. All of our old friends and some of his new ones were there. My best friend instinctivly reached out and grabbed my hand as the service began and continued to hold it for almost the entire service.
This is a moment and an action I will never forget.

Some people weren't there. People that I expected (perhaps wrongly) to be there weren't. It is true that in these states and times of true agony- that you find out who your true family and friends are. Some people get so caught up in their own lives and their own "happiness" that they forget the times when you were there for them. But alas, these are the people you don't need around you anyway. I am glad for the "cleaning up and sorting out" God has done in my life. I remain dissapointed in those people, but I am not broken by it. In fact I now stand taller and stronger.

My mother is grieving the loss of her true love.
I am grieving the loss of the man that was, and the father he became and could have continued to be.

"Death is a dimension, not a line."

Things are yucky. There are clothes, and things, and money and affairs to be sorted out and all I want to do is sit in his room, wrapped up in his favourite sweaters and cry.

Sometimes I do feel like I'm drowning in it. It's hard to be positive, it's hard to go to work, it's hard to get up in the morning and go to sleep at night.

I wasn't prepared for how much I would miss him.
It envelopes me like the strongest ocean tide and I struggle for it not to pull me under.

I miss my daddy.

So I sit and wait for the sun to get brighter. To feel that warm glow on my face again. To laugh and really mean it. To feel the desire to talk to God. I'm just not there yet.
I'm still trying to figure out why the world looks so different. Why I'm seeing people in such different lights. I need peace, I need hope. I need something so wildly happy that I loose myself in it.
So I'll wait.
And with every heart beat that pounds in my chest I'll still feel him and his words. I'll still feel the chill in his hand. I'll still see the pain in my mother's eyes.
But hopefully soon it will become fainter. Not the heart beat, but the pain it seems to accompany.
I just want the heartbeat back. And I wish it could be for both of us.