Grief

I think that this is going to be the hardest thing that I have written about yet.  Some things I don't know if I've ever even said them out loud.
Grief is a hard thing for everyone to deal with and I understand that.  It makes it a great deal harder when you've never had to deal with it before and you've never really seen it dealt with.  Honestly I'm not sure that I have actually dealt with it or all of it anyway.  In my family we don't talk about things and I think that makes it harder to deal with.

11/18/14.  Two year ago this November I lost my daddy.  This is still something thats very hard for me and probably always will be.  My dad and I did not always have a very good relationship.  From what I remember when I was a very young girl I was always a daddy's girl.  Some of that I think came from how much alike we always were.  I look just like my dad, when I was younger that was something that I hated being told, but now that he's gone its comforting.  I also have a lot of elements of my daddy's personality.  As people always tell me, if they knew my daddy, you must be one of Gary's girls.  Then when I was about nine I think my parents separated and then got divorced.  That was another really hard time for me.  Unlike some of my siblings I always knew that my dad loved me, but I knew that he was bad at it.  And for a while he was so angry with my mom.  It took a lot of years away from his family and some very hard times in my dads life, like the loss of both of his parents, for him to realize how to be a little bit better at it.  Several years before my dad died he and I got significantly closer when he had one of his many battles with his health.  I ended up spending almost three weeks with my dad during and after he spent a week and a half in the hospital.  It was in the summer so it was easier for me, but I was the one that dropped everything and went and took care of my dad.  We talked a lot in those days and nights that I spent with him.  I learned things that I never knew and got insights to his emotions that I had never had before.  It was a trying time but a good time, it brought us closer together.
Then in November two years ago I got a terrible phone call.  My sister called saying that the hospital had just called her to ask if anyone even knew my father was in the hospital because no one had been to see him.  He was in bad shape.  Megan and Laura were going to see him but they did not have a lot of information because my sister had not talked to the dr. yet.  I told them that I was not going on this late night trip.  I thought that this was going to be like all of the other trips.  My dad had been in and out of the hospital since that time 3 years before when I had spent so much time with him in the hospital plus I had work, I now had a baby girl to worry about  and unbeknownst to most of my family I was already pregnant with baby #2.  Part of me also felt like it could be someone else's turn now.  When my sisters called to update me on the way or the way back after talking with the dr.  I knew.  That was Sunday night or maybe Monday morning, but I already knew then that my dad was dying.  That next morning I went with the two of them back down to Charleston to see him.  There he was connected to all those tubes and a ventilator was breathing for him.  I think that I only went back to see him once in the two days that we were there because I already knew that he was gone.  My daddy wasn't there, and I didn't want that to be the only way that I could remember him.  I still struggle with that not having that last image of him be the first image that pops into my head every time.  That week was a whirlwind.  Its like as soon as I got there I was in charge and its like the whole hospital staff could tell, no matter what the paperwork said and no matter who else arrived.  I am my dad's second to youngest child out of 7, yet I was in charge with making sense of what the drs. said (with the help of my youngest sister), I was the one in charge of coordinating with the whole rest of the family, and in the end despite what his paperwork said I ended up being the one in charge of all of the decisions.  All this time trying to mother my daughter from afar and trying to at least marginally take care of myself for the precious little baby I was carrying.  I was the one that told the drs. to stop dialysis even though he needed it because it wasn't working, while my sister who could make that call just cried and nodded.  I was the ones that told the counselors that I knew that my dad was dying and that we were going to have to cut off life support we were just waiting for one more brother to arrive and for it to sink in for some of my siblings.  I was the one that ended up telling them, the drs. and my siblings, that it was time to cut off the life support and to just let him go.  I was also the one that ended up being in charge of his cremation and arrangements.
For as long as I can remember this has always been my role in my family.  I am the one that steps up and deals with stuff when no one else can.  This left me very little time for my own personal grief.  Time that I probably have still not yet taken like I need to.  This also left me with a great deal of anger to go along with the almost unmanageable sadness.  I may not have spoken to my dad as often as I should have, but even my siblings recognize that he and I shared a special bond.  Yet I was the one that had to make that call while so many older ones just stood my and watched me.  I was the one that only cried on the phone in the other room, when I could finally get someone to be there for me, while I took care of everyone else.  Being my fathers daughter I may not have done it as gracefully as some, but I carried that burden.
Today I am still very sad, but I am not quite as angry.  Still a little bitter about how it all worked out if  I am being completely honest.  But I think that it had to happen this way.  I think that this was God's big push to get me back, and it was my dad's time to go anyway to be in a place where his body is no longer broken and he's no longer hurting, but its hard every day.  I know God had a plane and still has one, but some days thats a little easier for me to see than others.