Reflections

Five years ago today….

• By fannieb
• August 11, 2015
• No Comments

Five years ago today my father died. I learned of it when I called the nursing home desk to speak with him and the thoughtless aid who answered the phone matter-of-factly said, “Oh he passed today.” As you can imagine I was confused and in disbelief. That was not what I expected to hear. I asked her if she knew who I was asking to speak to and she said she did and that he had died. Then I hung up the phone and dialed my mom’s number to see if she could corroborate this. I got a busy signal again and again.

I, being 250 miles away, felt helpless for the next 30 minutes until I got a call from my mom on her cell phone. She was out of breath and she blurted out, “Your father just died.” My feeling of helplessness melted into despair. The space in my chest where my heart was ached and I felt a sudden rush of nausea.

My mother had rushed over to the nursing home after my aunt had called to tell her that he was in distress. When my mom arrived only 15 minutes later his body rested motionless in the bed, an embattled shell devoid of life; though no longer suffering. She was in shock. This was the second husband she’d seen die. He had been her first husband, the one she had been desperately in love with, the one who fathered her two children. She was lost. And so was I.

It’s so hard to believe that five years have already gone by since that earth shattering day when I learned first-hand that parents are not immortal. This relationship, a wall of sorts that shielded me from the world, was only temporary. I felt lost, exposed, vulnerable even though I was a 43-year-old woman who’d been living on her own for 20 years. The comfort of my father’s strength and guidance and love had been extinguished and in its wake left daddy’s little girl empty and broken-hearted.

But I survived his death, the grief, and the cleaning up of a messy estate. And I survived the loss of my mother three years almost to the day later. Now I am stronger and more powerful in who I am. I am more confident, have more conviction, and more courage which has arisen from the love they both gave me in life and the lessons of strength and resilience that they taught in the way they lived. I carry this with me every single day. And though they are lost to me in this world, there are always with me in spirit.

Photo Credit: CPG Grey