My Appa, He called me Sunshine

One night in 2009 my Appa picked up a pistol and clicked it against his chin hoping it would end it all. I was young enough to have no idea what that meant but old enough to remember the cry of my mother and the sight of the gurney bringing him out the front door. I remember the team of surgeons at the hospital rushing to save his life and his clear eyes when he looked at me in the ICU. But this is not my Appas legacy, he was far far more to me.

He was a World war 2 vet that had concealed his depression from his entire family to keep everyone from worrying & put on a strong front. He had been in the military from when he was 17 till his 50s in a time where he was a statistic. He was a spy in the navy sent to collect intel. A Ghost they went after to erase the truth. He had seen war, anguish and the brutality of the world. He called me his little sunshine. The angel that kept his world spinning.

He was my grandpa but adopted me at a month old after my biological mother decided she didn't want me and my brother was all she needed. I might have not come into this world intentionally but he loved me as if he planned me his whole life. To most he was in shellshock and a shell of a man who once was. However, I choose to remember him as the man who let me put makeup on him and paint his nails. Or the man who would obliterate anything that gave me the wrong look. Anyone who called me an orphan. Anyone who broke my dreams. To him I was capable of saving the world just by standing strong. He taught me to fight hard for what I believe in. This is the story of my father.

When I was a baby before he took me in I was very sick. My biological mother and father smoked knowing I was fatally allergic so I had to have an oxygen tank when he brought me home coughing and wheezing, unable to gulp air like a fish out of water. He healed me. Putting me on the ground in the full moon praying to the moon for my recovery and doing whatever treatment to breathe new life into me. It worked and as I grew my biological mother tried to take me from him. He told them he would never let them hurt me again. He said my spirit was too soft; they would break me and ruin all that was good. He promised I would be protected as long as he was around. He didn't have this luxury as a child. His father was an alcoholic that beat his mother and threatened to kill him. He ran away at 13 and followed the train tracks and hitchhiked his way to florida from the midwest where his grandmother lived. She took him until he left for the war. He would go through a few marriages that left him broken. Women he trusted gutted him and left him high and dry until he met a girl one day in Saigon the capital of Vietnam who only spoke French and vietnamese. She would become my mother after he took me in. She was willing to risk it all for him and from that day forward they traveled all over the world together moving from country to country for his work. running away from people after him.

his was my father. The man who built me a 1965 baby yellow volkswagen beetle in our little garage to take me on adventures in. stacking pillows so I could see out the window. He held my hand when I decided to run away from home at 5. My mom wouldn't take me to dance class that day. He begged me "Honey please don't go" chasing after me in his walker. He was shot in the knee in Cambodia when they left him in the jungle and his knee was never the same. He could barely walk but would swallow the pain to play with me.

After his attempt to lose his life they wouldn't let him stay with me anymore saying his attempt put me at risk even though we all knew he would never put me in danger. The doctors sent him to a psychiatric facility with bars on the windows. He spent his birthday there that year wishing that the attempt would have worked. they wouldn't let me visit him or for him to come home. He was sent to a nursing home after a few months where he lived out his days till he eventually passed in 2013. He had a small courtyard he grew roses for me in. When I came to visit he would just hug me for as long as he could and ask me to tell him how life was outside that godforsaken place he was forced to call home. The nurses said in the middle of the night he would have nightmares and scream "God why don't you take me". He was in agony every day until I lost him for good. In 2013 he had an attack of sorts we still don't know why or how it happened but he went into a coma.

For weeks my mom and I would sit by his bed hoping he would come out of it. He didn't. She had to pull the plug on the life support when they could see no more brain activity. All I could do was sit and tickle his feet watching them dodge my fingers swearing up and down to my mom. He was playing a sick prank on us. The man that was supposedly no longer there. his warm hands and the smell that was all so familiar to me. That smell that taught me how to ride a bike and caught me when I almost fell in the pond. He survived for 3 days without life support till he passed. He passed away in Room 13 on December 13th of 2013 in his sleep. His favorite number was 13. He would often say. If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all.

That day I lost the man that grounded me and I felt numb and so lost. He would miss everything. All that has happened since. I'm turning 20 this year. 9 years without my father. He missed me growing up and falling in love. Making stupid mistakes and then making them right. He missed me fighting battles for my life. However I'm sure he would be proud of the woman I am today. I wouldn't be her without him. I know somewhere he is looking down on me smiling and saying his sunshine is making him proud

.

Sometimes I wish my story was different. But this is the reality of being a child of someone who loves you with all their heart but never got help with their own battles after fighting battles for a country. Never once was he offered any actual help with his depression or ptsd. Never once was his journey acknowledged. To the world he was a speck of sand on a beach somewhere but he was my everything. He protected me from the world but I was too young to be there for him when he needed me most.

So please hug your fathers and never spend a dull moment with them. I would give anything to have him read to me again or dust my eyelashes again.

- His Sunshine ( E.W)