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He’s dead. I saw him die. I was there. I was present.

The morning after my Dad passed I woke up and forgot that he died. It took me a few minutes till I recalled that he died the day before. It freaked me out a bit so I decided I needed to voice his death out loud.

So, I walked around my apartment and said “He’s dead, he’s dead.” Then stopped and addressed my Dad, “Really Dad, really?” It didn’t come from a place of surprise, or bewilderment but someplace else. It was more like, are you serious Dad, did you really do this? It was not his fault that he had cancer, and it’s not like I was angry at him but, really?

A few months ago I noticed that my Dad stopped texting me, no calls, didn’t come down to see me, nothing. I asked my sister if she thought he was mad at me or something cause I had sent him an email stating how depressed I was. I had a mental break and went on medical leave at work cause my life had become unmanageable. I had been working in the streets trying to get homeless people linkage to mental health services and housing and it was a total joke. No one wanted anything and it had become a complete waste of my time. It bogged me down to a depleted place of depression and sent my Dad an email laying it all down.

My father never really asked me about my job. I think he was ashamed that I was working in the streets and still working for the County. He was a hard core capitalist and thought working for the county was some form of socialism. Anyway, I thought maybe the email was shocking or disturbing to him to the point that it left him not comfortable communicating with me. I texted my sister asking if she thought our Dad was acting weird, cause I hadn’t heard from him and she said no, that he was fine just not by his phone as much. I had a feeling that something was wrong but thought maybe my sister was right, and he just wasn’t around his phone so didn’t text as readily as usual. But there was something wrong. There were cancerous tumors growing in my body. . Did he know he had cancer? Did he know he was dying and decided not to get help? Was he so in denial that he didn’t choose to ignore it but actually didn’t think anything was wrong? Who knows. I’ll never know cause I never asked him. When he was in the hospital I didn’t want to bring up the D word, death, cause I thought if I did somehow it would make him die, coupled with the fact that he kept insisting that he was fine, and that everyone around him was making a big deal out of nothing.

I didn’t check my phone the night he was admitted. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard he went to the ER for lymphoma and was admitted to the inpatient floor. I ran out my door and jumped in a cab to UCLA Medical Center. When I entered his room his best friend was sitting by his side. He flew in from Washington the moment he heard the news, and they were watching sports together just like they would anyway.

My father always thought he would go like his Dad and drop dead of a heart attack. He spent his life rowing every morning at the crack of dawn and was a master champion. He had so many medals it was ridiculous. I always thought at every stroke he was rowing away from death. He wasn’t going to die of a heart attack. He wasn’t going to go that way. I remember when he told me the story of hearing that his father died. He was rowing in one of those indoor tanks at Cornell University when he was approached by faculty. My grandfather was the Dean of Mechanical Engineering at the University. My Dad said once he saw the guys there to deliver the news, he knew that his father had died. When he told me the story it was one of the only times I experienced my Dad cry in his life. When I walked into his room I wondered where were my tears? Ok, I’m in shock. That’s normal.

But as weeks continue to go by, I continue to be afraid. Why am I in such denial and when is it going to happen when it hits me?   Where will I be? Will I be alone, or in the middle of a dance class? I don’t know. Yet, there are some hard core tangible visible realities that I recently discovered that truly drives the reality home.

When I look around my apartment I see all the gifts he had given me over the years. And it was the little things that struck me. Like the binoculars he gave me as a house warming gift when I moved into my loft. I could look out onto the streets facing East LA and check out the scene. Or, the salt and pepper shakers he had given me from a cool shop we visited after a fishing trip up in Vancouver. I looked around and he was everywhere. And somehow it started to seep in that my recovery from his death was going to be a long road. He was everywhere yet now he was gone. And the thing that makes me actually cry is listening to Waylon Jennings or Willy Nelson (he loved country music) but I find myself shutting it off cause I’m not ready to face the music, literally.

But I will. I have to. And after all the books I’ve looked into that try to describe the levels of mourning I’ve come to realize that there is no specific route of mourning to endure. Everyone experiences mourning differently and, it is unique to each individual which somehow gives me some hope. I am, and will continue to be, on my own journey and discover new things about me that I would have never imaged before. I hold onto that cause it’s kinda exciting. I can have some sort of rebirth, despite the loss. At least that’s what I am hanging on for now. I hope this story helps someone out there grappling with the D word.