Moments

Do you remember it? That one moment that you feel changed your life? Maybe you've only had it happen once, or maybe multiple times. Maybe it changed your life for the better and it's remembered as one of the happiest times of your life. Or maybe, like me, it turned your whole world upside down for what you consider to be the third time in your life. Maybe it's more for you, or less.

Can you pinpoint that moment? Could you tell me about it in so much detail that you could tell me a time? Not that the time matters. A moment in time is just that. It can shape you, for better or worse.

I can pinpoint mine. I can tell you what led up to it. I can tell you about the night itself, and what I was doing when it felt like my whole world was crumbling around me. Maybe I'm making it seem more dramatic than it really is, or maybe I'm not. I could tell you about when I lost my grandmother, so suddenly, when I was only fourteen. How she was a second mother to me, and all of the nights spent at her house with her and my grandfather, watching their game shows with them. I could tell you about my parents splitting up almost exactly a year later, and getting a divorce. These are two moments in time I remember well, and still think of so often, ten years later. I won't, however; I'm here to talk about a different moment.

Admittedly, I've never had my issues with mental health properly diagnosed. You don't need to have any sort of official diagnosis to know something's wrong. It's your body. You just know. That's not to say you shouldn't get help, of course. I'm just too scared to. The point of me saying this is to warn you that this is mostly me getting my feelings out, if that's even possible. I suppose it's time to get to the real point of me even writing this. The real moment I need to write out and get off my chest before it eats me alive.

It's about my dad. The night my sister and I lost our father, to be specific. Yes, I'm aware that I haven't mentioned her until now, but considering the subject and the night, she has a part in it too. Our dad was never really a healthy man. He struggled with one illness or another since he was a child. I don't think I could name all of the health issues he had, to be honest. Most of them tend to run in our family, though. A history of heart conditions, diabetes, lung conditions, even issues with kidneys and liver. One of these conditions or another has always seemed to plague members of my family. My dad was no exception.

I never planned to go into so much detail about this but here we are. (Please don't expect me to be medically accurate. I'm no doctor or nurse.) Back in 2017, my dad had an unfortunate accident with some frozen meat falling out of the freezer and directly onto his foot. Yes, I know. Obviously, it's going to be very painful and there was the possibility of a broken bone. Little did my dad know, it would be so much worse than he realized. If any of you know anything about someone being diabetic and the risks that come with it, you know what the risk is of getting any sort of cuts, sores, or otherwise and not having them looked at right away. Thanks to this frozen meat (Yes, I realize and can appreciate the comedic part of that statement), and my dad's stubbornness, there was some sort of sore that had developed on the top of his foot, just below the toes. Needless to say, he tried to treat it himself, for a couple of weeks before he went to the hospital closest to us (Not usually recommended, with that hospital, but I digress) and they basically cleaned it, said it wasn't infected, and sent him on his way. From there, it got worse, and he started going to a special wound care clinic. He tried treating it at home, while also visiting them. Unfortunately, the infection had too much time to set in, by that point. Now I have nothing personal against any specific nurse or doctor, but I think if they had done something when he first went to them, things wouldn't have escalated the way they did. However, that didn't happen and I know it can't be changed. To make this long story a bit shorter, the infection got worse and so did my dad's health. I'll spare you some of the gory details but needless to say, he was also losing blood. He was taken to the hospital (A different hospital, this time, I assure you) and that's when we were informed that the infection had gotten into his blood stream. He was septic. On top of that, his kidneys were also failing him. The family was called in to say their goodbyes. Thankfully, back then, his condition improved enough that they were able to remove the infected portion of his foot. Not that they had any choice, as it was practically rotting while still attached to his body, at that point. He eventually recovered enough to be moved to a normal room, and later on, he was moved to a nursing home & rehabilitation center, just until he could walk on his own, after the surgery. That, and he had to do dialysis for several months, which carried into him having to continue it for a bit, even after he came home. I honestly can't remember just how long he wasn't home as clearly, and maybe that's due to how I didn't visit very much, for multiple reasons. I'm not in the best physical shape, myself, to say the least.

I know what you're thinking, right about now; I said we lost our father and so far, to you, he made a full recovery. Unfortunately, however, I feel that was never true. Over the next two years, my sister and I watched our father go downhill, whether we realized it at the time or not. Everything that happened to him that year, and probably everything that had happened in his life since the death of my grandmother, had taken it's toll. As I said, he was never a really healthy man, but it seemed like he was only getting sicker, in some ways. His mental health was even suffering more than it already had been. His anxiety, depression, everything.. The nights where he would come into the living room, gasping for air and yelling for help, all thanks to his anxiety and his breathing problems. All my sister and I could do was watch and try to help him calm down, which was usually met with agitation. I have so much to say on this matter. So much to get out.

However, to get back to the point of this, 2019 was a bad year for a number of people, for one reason or another. It was especially bad for my sister and I. I'm not sure how it happened this time. I think he might have hit his leg with the car door or something crazy like that. A total accident. Just like that, though, the nightmare was happening all over again. The difference being that it was worse this time. The sore developed more quickly, and spread more quickly, it seemed like. There were issues relating to his heart. Poor circulation in his leg that was reducing his body's ability to heal itself. He was in so much pain, and it seemed like it was for so long. He went to doctors and the wound care clinic, tried nursing it at home, so scared of it happening again. I think he might have even went to the hospital. He was terrified they'd want to remove his whole leg, though. This part seems like a blur to me now, but I think he waited too long to go again. I'm not sure. I just remember that I begged him to go, so many times. He finally went, when the pain got bad enough. When it got to be too much for him. A family member met him on the way and drove him the rest of the way, thankfully. He was too stubborn and hard-headed to go by ambulance, I guess. He also didn't trust the closer hospital, of course. It was within days that we found out his kidneys were shutting down and not function as they should've been, again. He would need to be on dialysis again. I can tell you, right now, that he wasn't in there as long, this time. On July 23rd (I only know the dated because I had told a group of friends about it.), they took him down for some tests, and something to do with his leg, and he coded on them. They had to do CPR to bring him back and he was on life support. You always hear that whole saying, "My blood ran cold", and you never know what it feels like until you experience it. Getting that news, I think I did. It was a waiting game, at that point, I'm sad to say. If memory serves, he coded because he had a heart attack. Part of his heart, after that, was no longer working properly, if at all. He made it through, and was able to be taken off of life support though. We were so happy, and relieved. Part of his heart they'd thought dead, by some miracle, was now working again, if I recall correctly. They did, however, end up removing his leg later on. It would be a long road, but he was on his way to recovery, or so we thought. He even ended up able to be moved to that same nursing home & rehabilitation center that he was in back in 2017. Now, I wasn't there to see most of this stuff. I didn't visit much this time, either. I know. I'm a terrible daughter for not visiting my own father when he needed me there so badly. I'm told he understood. He still loved me, and knew I loved him.

We were suppose to be able to trust them with him. I'm not going to say anything is necessarily anyone's fault, but they dropped my dad one day. I believe it was on a Thursday, to be exact. Whether that had anything to do with it or not, the facts are that I was told he start having issues with his stomach in those next few days, afterward, and that he was vomiting, which looked like it had blood in it. Like I said, I'm not a medical person, and this is not to toss blame on anyone, regardless of how it sounds. I'm just telling my story. The details of it are a bit fuzzy to me, as far as the medical stuff goes, but there was internal bleeding. I remember those words being told to me by my family members who went to the place that night.

Remember that moment I was talking about? The one that changed my whole world and made it feel like it was all crashing down around me? This is where I tell you about it. Where I tell you what's always replaying in my mind, even if only in the back of it.

It was somewhere between 11:30pm and 1am, September 8th going into September 9th, and I was just sitting at my PC, talking to a good friend, trying to keep my mind off of worrying about my dad. My PC is in the living room (It's always been a difficult living situation, to say the least) and I usually keep the porch light on because I also sleep in the living room, and I don't particularly like looking out into darkness. It was out that night. I can't remember if it was just off or if it had blown and we just hadn't gotten around to changing the bulb yet. Regardless, our dog seemed like she heard something, so I got a little freaked out, especially since I couldn't see, when I seen a light and people coming onto the porch. It was only after they got closer and I was able to recognize the shape of one of the people. My uncle that had been staying with my dad so much. I told my friend I'd be back, took my headset off, and went to let them in. I had a bad feeling, already but I stupidly wanted to believe they were just here to check on us or something. That only lasted until I got to the door and opened it to see who was there. My uncle (We'll call him T) and his wife (G), and another uncle (H) of mine (My dad was the baby of five), all standing there, the looks on their faces making it all the more obvious. I couldn't just guess or say it, though. I needed them to say it. To confirm what I immediately knew was true. It's how I've always been. I was the same way with my grandma's death. They tried to get me to sit down. I hate that. Just tell me, please. They did. I didn't know how to feel. Part of me was shocked, stunned into silence, even when I so desperately wanted to cry and just fall apart. I don't have the ability to fully do that, until I'm alone, I don't think. My aunt stayed in the living room with me while T and H told my grandpa and my other uncle (R), that lives here. We had lost him. There was something about the internal bleeding and he coded on them, again. They couldn't save him that time. My poor uncle, R, was a mess when he joined the rest of us in the living room. They were so close. That's to say nothing of my grandpa. For a father to outlive and bury his child.. For any parent to have to go through that.. I can't imagine the pain. I've hardly ever seen him cry. The only other time I remember was when my grandma passed away, and when he cried tears of joy over certain people getting saved in church.

The most gut-wrenching part of all, however, was when I had to call my mom, so that she could wake my sister up and tell her. Oh, how I wanted to protect her and wait to tell her. To let her sleep a little bit longer, in peace, before her world fell apart, too. I know I couldn't protect her from something like that, but I definitely want to. I couldn't even be the one to tell my mother. I broke down, crying, as I tried. I had to pass the phone over to my aunt. I feel weak for that. My sister is younger than me, in case it wasn't obvious. She only just turned seventeen in February. I hate how she's had to lose so many people, like this, in such a short time. To continue, it wasn't long before my sister called me on Discord. A video call. She was devastated. Angry. She was screaming about how it wasn't fair and questioning why something like this always had to happen to her. It broke my heart. My family couldn't even look at the screen, themselves, because it broke theirs too. I could do nothing to comfort her. I couldn't even give her a proper answer. It's not fair, and I certainly didn't know why so many situations like this had happened with our family.

Don't get me wrong - I know it's part of life, of course. There's so much more I could write about my regrets with my dad and some advice based on my experiences, and I still might. Something that will definitely be shorter, and something about how you should spend the time with people and make memories while you can. We're all living on borrowed time. Make memories with the people you love while you can, whether they're happy or sad, because it'll be all you have left of them one day, or all they have left of you. I think that's part of why I'm writing this, aside from just getting it all off my chest and written down. To remind anyone who reads this, if they even bother to make it this far, of one thing: Life is short.