Digging deep

I've been doing a weekly blog challenge on another site for a few months, using it as a tool to kind of dig into the dysfunction in my head.

Some weeks it's helpful, some weeks it leaves me a mess. I figure those are the weeks it's really working.

This is what came out of this week's challenge:

I remember I was pretending to sleep in my Mems' bed. My uncle was staying over and in my room. His EMT training something we needed in the house.

I was late. I don't remember what time.

I heard him yell, "David." His voice weaker than I ever remember, and panicked.

It took a few minutes for everyone to start moving. My uncle down the hall, Mems to his bedroom, me to the bathroom.

Phone calls were made, 911, to my mother, to my aunts.

The ambulance arrived. They talked about his DNR with Mems and asked if she wanted to take him to the ER to die or stay here to die. They said it nicer, but this was the gist of it.

They went to the ER.

I stayed home. In the bathroom sitting in the floor. I didn't want to see, they didn't want me to see.

My mother stayed with me, repeating that they'd make him better at the hospital.

I knew they wouldn't.

I found Remington Steele in re-runs on TV in my Mems' room and climbed in bed and half watched.

The phone rang not long after they left. My mother answered and started crying. She didn't have to say anything to me.

I rolled over and pretended to sleep. Tears soaked my pillow.

Father's Day is tough for me. Some years. Some years it's fine. The same goes for his birthday and holidays and the day he died.

Sometimes they're just ordinary days in my life. Sometimes I sob myself to sleep after looking into his eyes frozen in a picture too long.

It's been 13 years. And no time at all. We knew it was going to happen and it still hit the family like a sledge hammer, we're still splintered, broken wood.

One day I'll have been alive without a father than I was with one. One day I'll get married and walk myself down the aisle. One day I'll think about him and not
break down.


One day Father's Day won't be like opening a barrel of emotions and thoughts jumbled in my head.

At least I think so.