I’m curled up on the end of my sister’s twin-sized bed. Her voice carries through the silence of the night, gently, calming the sobs that are racking my body. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me…” Finally, I drift into a fitful sleep. But even when I am sleeping, I know that nothing will be the same ever again.
Six hours before, my life was normal. It’s sobering and makes my brain hurt to look back in time and realize that I woke up that day and I had no idea that time would soon be split into before and after. That morning, on August 23rd, 2008, I was just a 15-year-old girl. I remember there was a homeschool party that my brother and I were dying to go to. I woke up filled with that intense motivation to get my whole list of chores completed in record time, without having to be asked twice, to ensure we were allowed to go.
I remember that at some point in the morning, there was a sibling squabble. I don’t know what it was about, or even which siblings were involved, but I know it got ugly. There was name-calling, and screaming, and maybe even objects being thrown around. So Dad did what he always did when there was conflict in the house — he called a mandatory family meeting in the living room, where everybody had to stop what they were doing and sit. And then he would so gently, and so lovingly, encourage us to talk about what happened. He would shepherd and guide, and the end goal was always reconciliation, communication, and forgiveness. He was the glue that held our family together. He was the reason why my siblings were my best friends, despite our many differences.
I’m sure I was miles away when we all sat in that living room. If I close my eyes and try to imagine what it was like, the edges are blurry, and I don’t know if I’m imagining that specific day, or a thousand other days that were exactly alike. But I don't doubt that as I sat in that room, I tapped my foot impatiently and rolled my eyes, counting down the minutes until we could leave for our party. Finally, when every chore had a satisfying check mark in the box, we received our official “yes.” I was ecstatic.
It was Dad who drove us to the party. He and my brother, aged 17, sat in the front, me in the back. We lived in the middle of nowhere, and I remember the car ride was about forty-five minutes. It hurts my heart that to this day, I cannot remember what we talked about. I don’t know if the radio was on, or if I stared out the window, daydreaming about the fun night stretching ahead of me, or whether we were engaged in conversation. I can’t remember if when he pulled into the driveway, I even said goodbye to him.
I can’t remember if he said “I love you.” I can’t remember if I turned around and waved to him one more time before running off to give my friend a hug.
When I go back to that moment in time, my chest is aching and I want to scream to my 15-year-old self, turn around, look in his beautiful brown eyes, throw your arms around him, tell him how much you love him. Close your eyes, breathe in the smell of his aftershave, memorize the way his arms feel around you. This is it. This is your last moment with him, forever and ever and ever.
The night was a blur of trampoline jumps, a digital camera with 500 new photos, walking at dusk, stale Cheetos in a plastic bowl cloudy from being put in the dishwasher even though it was hand-wash only. I was on cloud nine. My social cup was filled all the way to the brim. Around 9:30, my sister, aged 20, arrived in our old, beat-up blue Suburban, the one that four of us had to double-buckle in the middle seat for our whole family to go anywhere together. I gave my friends one more goodbye hug, promising to upload all of the photos to Facebook the minute I arrived at home. I already had in my head the perfect album name.
I leaned my forehead against the window, a small smile on my face, as I reminisced about the night. I was already fantasizing about the next party, as teenagers so often do, constantly craving the next surge of oxytocin before the current one was even over.
And then my sister’s phone rang.
I barely noticed the sound.
She only said a few words. Something in her tone wasn’t right.
She hung up the phone.
“Dad had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital. We need to pray.”
My heart is in my stomach. Adrenaline courses through my veins. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I have no idea how much time passes. It could have been five minutes. It could have been thirty. Time seemed to both stop moving forward, but also skip forward five years, ten years, thirty years… my head is spinning, I’m trying to make sense of the words that came out of her mouth…
Then her phone rings again.
She answers.
“What am I supposed to tell them? What am I supposed to tell them? What am I supposed to say to them?”
She hangs up the phone. And the words tumble out of her mouth…
I cannot actually recall the exact words she used. I know it is my brain protecting me, the trauma wrapping up my memory in an airtight bubble, a blackout curtain for my emotions, where nothing can get in and nothing can get out.
But he is gone. He is gone. He is gone.
My two youngest siblings are in the back seat. My 12-year-old sister and my 10-year-old brother. My little sister starts screaming. Screaming. My brother, pleading with her, “Please stop, please stop screaming.” My older sister, hyperventilating, trying to drive through the tears, when suddenly, she screams, “The brakes aren’t working. The brakes aren’t working.” She pulls over onto the side of the road.
A car full of children, children who still need their father like the human body needs oxygen, but he is gone, and none of them can take full breaths of air.
I don’t know how long it was that we were pulled over in the parking lot of an orthodontist before one of our close family friends pulled up in her car. I know it was a 20-minute drive to the hospital, and I remember that she did not utter a single word for that entire drive. Years later, she would tell me that as she drove us to the hospital, she kept thinking to herself, “What do you say to a car full of children who just lost their father?”
When we arrived at the ER, the shock had taken over. I felt numb, like I was floating around in somebody else’s body. I remember my uncle coming out and meeting us in the parking lot. I remember him guiding me and my siblings in through the front door, down the corridor, into one of the ER waiting rooms.
I will never forget the image, seared forever in my brain, of what was waiting behind that door.
A couch. My oldest sister, first-born of the family, 27 and 7 weeks pregnant with her first child. She was curled up on the couch next to my brother-in-law. In the fetal position, numb to the world around her, drowning in an ocean of grief.
A small, ice-cold room, a table with an assortment of snacks and water bottles. They were vulgar and harsh, and I remember feeling livid. Who would want to eat, who would want to drink, in a room where people go after finding out the most earth-shattering news?
It was here that I heard what happened. My dad was home, alone, when he started to feel off. My mom was a nurse and working at the time. He got into the car, and he drove himself to the hospital. He called my oldest sister one time, and she missed the phone call. He did not leave a voicemail.
He parked in the emergency room parking lot, he walked in the front door, he checked himself in at the front desk.
And then he fell. Collapsed onto the floor.
He was 47 years old.
He was gone.
Before my mom could get there. Before my sister and her husband could get there.
Before a car full of kids could send enough prayers up to heaven, begging and pleading to see their dad just one more time.
I don’t remember how long we were in that waiting room, but I had never hated a place so much in my entire life. I hated the sterile, white walls, the ugly, plastic furniture, I hated how it was so cold that my toes were numb in my cheap Old Navy black flip-flops. I hated being in that room and seeing my sister in such absolute agony. I had never seen another human being’s heart break right in front of my eyes until that night.
When we finally left, we stopped at my aunt and uncle’s house a few minutes up the street. I remember stepping foot inside and feeling like I could not leave, even if they tried to drag me out. I could not bear the thought of going home. But grief had frozen my words, they were stuck inside of me, so I walked out the door and into the car, even though I felt like going home would make me come completely undone.
We drove the 20 minutes home, we pulled into the driveway, and I forced myself to swallow the tears. He’s not here. He’ll never be here ever again.
Within minutes of walking in the front door, I remember my mom and my sisters started cleaning the house. Straightening and scrubbing and vacuuming in a way that they had never done before. I remember thinking, “What the hell is wrong with you? How can you clean at a time like this?”
I might have gone upstairs, I might have taken a shower. I might have sat on the couch in the living room and stared off into the distance — I have no memory. When I finally lay my head down on my pillow, I wondered how I would be able to fall asleep with this new, searing pain that pierced my body every time I took a breath.
I remember thinking to myself, maybe listening to some worship music will calm me down. Maybe it will bring comfort to my aching heart. So I reached for my MP3 player and my headphones, the ones with the cord that had to be held just so for the music to come through without crackling.
The music was like hot coals being heaped onto my bleeding, oozing heart. Sobs overtook me, my breath became shallow, I was drowning, going under, I couldn’t breathe... the pain was so bad… how the hell am I supposed to live in a world where he isn’t here?
I ripped the headphones out of my ears, I sat up in bed, I feared that I would never sleep again.
I swung my legs down over the edge of my bed, I walked to my door, cracked it open, tiptoed into my sister's room.
I didn’t say a single word to her.
I curled up on the edge of her bed.
She didn’t say a single word to me.
She opened up the Bible, and she started reading through Psalms. Quietly, gently, tenderly… her voice calmed the sobs, my breath became even, and sleep finally came.
I woke up late the next morning. I remember walking downstairs, and our house had been invaded with people. All I wanted was a bubble, to be left alone, to let my tears fall in peace, but everywhere I turned, I was met with an “I’m so sorry.” The pity glance, that look that someone gives you when your dad just died and they have no idea what to say. On the dining room table were piles of photographs. Him as a baby, him in kindergarten. Him in high school. Him and my mom, my three oldest sisters as toddlers on their knees. The photos felt like bullets, threatening to shatter the oh-so-delicate calm demeanor I was putting on with every ounce of my strength. I stared at family and friends, watched as they picked up a picture, smiling and laughing, reminiscing.
I keep walking, into the living room, and there are more people. Sitting on couches and chairs, talking softly, my uncle strumming music on the guitar. Quiet weeping, eyes closed, someone praying out loud…
I felt like I was going to suffocate. I just wanted every damn person to leave.
I ran outside, my cousin and best friend since birth at my side, and we escaped to the front steps of my grandparents’ house next door. Here, I could breathe again. Here, I could laugh again. For a few moments, I was the girl I was just 24 hours ago. I’m laughing, and I’m talking about my crush, and my biggest problem in life is whether or not his lingering stare from across the room actually meant anything or not.
But it didn’t matter how long I sat on that step, longing for life to feel normal again. Reality was still waiting for me within the walls of my childhood home. The walls that would never again be a home for my dad.
I knew that our family movie nights were over forever, a huge bowl of popcorn on his lap, the remote resting on the arm of his favorite recliner. How annoyed my siblings and I would get when he would pause the movie every 20 minutes to predict what was going to happen next, or ask for a new snack or a glass of cold water. Never again would my brother sneak salt into his cup, trying to keep a straight face, watching as my dad went along with it every single time, even though he always knew. Never again would I rummage through the pantry on my quest to find him a snack and bring him a can of kidney beans, laughing hysterically as his brown eyes twinkled with delight.
Never again would we pile into the blue Suburban and drive to Grammy and Grandpa’s house for Christmas dinner, Dad sitting at the head of the table, Grammy fussing and fluttering from kitchen to table, bringing out steaming hot plates of stuffed shells, dinner rolls so fluffy they seemed to dissolve completely underneath the chunks of yellow butter.
A part of my Grammy died and was buried with my dad. The sparkle went out of her eyes, her will to live snuffed out like a candle with no more wax. Outliving her baby boy was too much for her to bear.
That week, I went with my mom and sisters to the funeral home. My mom had opted out of a traditional funeral and was planning a memorial service. One by one, they went into the room where his body was. I was determined not to go. But then, someone came out, and asked me, “Do you want to go see him?” I froze. I panicked. I didn’t know what the right answer was. I was both terrified of what I would find, and worried that if I didn’t go in, I would regret that moment forever.
I cracked open the door, took a few timid steps. I saw my Grammy, weeping, bending over his body, kissing him over and over again.
He looked like he was asleep. In the living room, on his favorite couch, hands folded over his chest, exactly like I would find him so many afternoons. I felt so nauseous and I wanted to scream. I turned around and fled, shutting the door behind me. I stood in the hallway, tears streaming down my face, and I knew that I had made the wrong choice. I could never take it back. The last memory of my dad, lying there like he was asleep, but he wasn’t, his soul was gone from his body and he would never say I love you, ever again, still haunts me to this very day.
It’s been 18 years. I have now lived more than half of my life without him. And that knowledge is its own heart-wrenching kind of pain.
August is the hardest month of the year for me. As the air changes and the cool breeze begins to take over, I can feel my body begin to shut down. Driving on the back roads to visit my Nana, next door to my childhood home, the last place he lived, I see the round, round hay bales lined up in the fields, and I am 15 again. I am 15 and I am sobbing into my pillow, every single night, a hole in my chest, wondering over and over, how am I supposed to live in a world where he is not here?
As everyone around me is shivering with excitement at the thought of fall around the corner, cozy sweaters and changing leaves, my body is screaming, no, no, no, no. It still remembers. The smell of fall, stepping outside in the morning and feeling the crispness in the air.
The weeks and months after his death are a blur in my mind. A blur of trying to hold it all in, trying not to cry in front of my mom, because watching her in pain was too much for my bruised and battered heart to bear. But my body knows, my body remembers, and every August, it starts to retreat.
I am so happy and full of life in the summer. Going for long walks, driving to the beach, sitting in front of the pool, soaking in the sunshine, my favorite book in hand… evenings at the park with my boys…
But grief is cyclical. And with the changing leaves, year after year, I find myself sinking back… hitting snooze morning after morning, until I give up on setting an alarm altogether. Early bedtimes are exchanged for late-night doomscrolling and hitting “Play Next Episode” over and over again.
Every single August, it feels like a little part of me is grieving his death all over again. I fight against September, against the coming months, almost as if it feels like I am leaving him, lost forever in the last week of August, buried in the ground of the cemetery.
Because eventually, everybody moved on. The visitors, the same ones who I hated so much the morning after, they stopped coming. The sympathy cards stopped arriving. The Facebook messages from friends stopped. The whole world started marching on again, but I was still drowning.
Eventually, even I started to forget. Because forcing myself to live, and filling my world with distractions and whatever joys I could find, was easier than drowning in the grief. And that’s when I met him, when my heart was aching and longing for love, longing for acceptance, longing for a shoulder to cry on. And so I threw every part of myself into him, blindly, willingly, a solvent for my wounds.
I can’t help but wonder, would my life have been different if I hadn’t lost Dad that summer? Would Dad have seen through his gentle exterior, would he have sensed the wolf in sheep’s clothing? I will never know.
18 years later, the grief has changed shape. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to live without him. Now, on the windy backroads of my childhood home, just a quarter of a mile up the street, on the sharpest curve, a memorial for another life, one I never knew, has made its home. Six months ago it appeared — a cross, beautiful bouquets of flowers, ribbons, an array of beautiful rocks. A family, standing with arms around each other. Swearing that they will never forget.
But now, the cross is crooked. The flowers are dead. Weeds choke the ground that was once fresh dirt. The wind has carried the rocks to places they once were not. Every time I drive by, I try not to look, but I cannot help it. It makes my heart ache — a physical reminder for what I did so many years ago, what human beings have to do in order to keep surviving.
I moved on. I forgot.
Today, when I try to remember my dad’s face in my head, all I see is a blur of images. If I focus hard enough, I can see the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, his beautiful smile that could light up a room. But then I wonder… is this an actual, real memory of him, or a figment of my imagination, made up of hundreds of photos of him that I have seen over the years? And then I start to feel panicky, like I did something wrong, and if I could go back in time and change the way that I dealt with the pain, maybe I would remember him better. Maybe I could hear his voice in my head. Maybe I could remember the last time he said I love you. The last time I felt his arms around me.
This year, something changed in me. I am learning that even though my coping mechanism is to run far, far away, out of that living room filled with grieving, hurting family and friends, away from the house where he woke up, opened up his eyes and got out of his bed for the very last time… all of the pain is still there.
My body remembers. Even if my brain did what it had to do to protect myself.
I am done running away. Instead, I am letting myself run towards the pain. Towards that night where my life suddenly became before and after. Because I am sick and tired of going into mourning every single August. I want to step outside on a crisp fall morning, take in the smell of autumn around me, and remember the way my heart was filled with joy when I would sneak onto the steps at night, after I was supposed to be in bed, looking down into the living room where he and my mom were, and he would smile up at me and let me come downstairs and stay up extra late.
I want to remember what it felt like to wake up on an August morning, my window open, fan blowing, and I could hear the sound of the lawnmower, Dad up early to beat the summer heat. I could see him outside my bedroom window, his red shorts, blue landscaping sleeveless T-shirt with a huge rip in it from a running in the woods emergency toilet paper situation. I want the smell of freshly cut grass to bring me back to those moments when the world was shiny and bright, and the family was all together, the way it was supposed to be.
I want to keep running, for him, for every single run that his heart was not strong enough to carry him on.
This weekend, I ran 18km.
1km for every year without him.
1km for all 20 grandchildren he never got to meet.
1km for every wedding his daughters had without a father-daughter dance.
1km for my high school graduation, without him in the front row, camera in hand, beaming with pride and joy.
1km for the 34-mile run to his parents’ house that he never got to do.
1km for the way he loved other people fiercely, the way he listened when someone spoke and made them feel like they were the only person in the room.
1km for the way he would stop and talk to strangers on the street, the cashier at the grocery store, taking the time to get to know them.
1km for his angelic smile and his sparkling brown eyes.
1km for the way he napped on his favorite couch with his favorite blanket and pillow, his arms crossed over his chest.
1km for the special ringtone he bought just for when my mom called him, Stevie Wonder’s smooth, soulful voice singing, I just called to say I love you…
1km for the way he loved my mom, unconditionally. Their 24 years of marriage, the way he showed me what love really looked like.
1km for the memory of throwing my arms around him when he finally walked through the front door after an extra-long shift at work, and I’m standing on his feet, trying to get my fingertips to touch.
1km for all the parts of him that still live in me, that soft glow that hits my chest when someone says, “You remind me of your dad so much…”
1km for all the parts of him I see in my son… his love for people, his fierce determination, his gift for communicating.
1km for the knowledge that even though I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, He is with me, every single step of the way.
1km for every day that I have finally learned to let myself feel again, to close my eyes as emotions wash over me, to name them by name, and then gently release them.
1km for learning to run towards the memories of him, and not away.
1km for the blood pumping through my veins, his blood, into my heart, carrying me through to the finish line, reminding me that I still have so much life to live.
I write about grief, motherhood, betrayal, healing, and the parts of our stories that we are so often too afraid or ashamed to say out loud. If you’d like to keep reading, I would love to have you here. 🤍
Losing a parent at that age must have been so traumatic. Losing a parent at any age is so traumatic. But you are allowed to let yourself start to enjoy the beginning of autumn again, he would want that for you ❤️
So beautifully written ! Thank you for sharing your story with such honesty. All I wanted to do was hold you as you grieved the wonderful father you once had.