So those of you who have been with me for a while now know that I lost my dad two years ago. Two years ago today, actually. Sometimes I think I've managed to cope but sometimes, even now, I just break down over the littlest things. I've never really written about my dad's death, so I wanted to just write it down. For me, if nothing else. 

I was 17 and in the eleventh grade in high school when my dad first got sick. He'd smoked cigarettes his entire life, and he pretty much destroyed his lungs. I mean, DESTROYED. I wish I still had the photographs they gave us from that first time. It was disgusting. I would think it would be enough to make anyone stop smoking, personally. But so when I was 17, my dad's lung collapsed and he had to have surgery. I remember he was terrified. I was terrified. Everyone was terrified. They ended up having to do surgery and they actually removed part of one of his lungs. I'm not very good at anatomy, but from what I understand, one side of your lungs has three sections and the other side has two. He lost the bottom section of the side that has three parts. They actually let us look at the lung. It was so disgusting. So my dad pulled through the surgery fine, but they told him to stop smoking. You'd think that would be common sense, but for an addiction, I guess it's hard to break. So my dad kept smoking. 

Over the next couple of years, he continued to smoke and he got sicker and sicker. He was in and out of the hospial a lot during this time. He kept smoking up until they put him on oxygen, so of course he just made his illness even worse. I'm not proud of it, but I came to resent my dad a lot during this time. I was furious at him for not taking his health more seriously. I was tired of rushing to the hospital in the middle of the night in tears because everyone thought he was dying. I was tired of my life being interrupted by his illness. 

I had graduated from college and was working two jobs to make ends meet when he had yet another bad turn. My best friend and her boyfriend came and picked me up from my house at like 1 o'clock in the morning because I was so upset that I couldn't drive and they took me to the hospital and stayed there with me all night. That night my dad should have died. He had a do not resuccitate order, but they did so anyway and saved his life. And I feel bad saying this, but for what? What did they save his life for?

Everything only went downhill from there. My dad was in the ICU for about two weeks after that event. I had already taken off that week of work because I was supposed to go on a cruise with my friend, but I ended up not being able to go even though I had already paid for it. I spent an entire week at the hospital with my dad. I spent the night there every night, which meant that I didn't sleep or eat anything other than hospital food for an entire week. I left for about two hours a day when my stepmom or aunt would come by to shower and that was it. And my dad was mean. He was demanding and not a very pleasant person to be around. I stubbed my toe one day rushing to get him some ice or something and I ripped my toenail off. My dad yelled at me for bleeding on the floor. Thankfully one of the nurses was really nice and she bandaged me up. 

My dad never went home after that. He spent about two weeks in the ICU and then about a month in a regular parient room at the same hospital. After that, he was moved to a more permanent wing of the same hospital. I liked when he was there because I could go and visit pretty regularly. It was about an hour's drive from my house, so it was okay. So he stayed there for about a year, and then, because the insurance wouldn't pay for it anymore, he was moved to a nursing home. 

So I guess here is where I should tell you about my stepmother. She was a gold-digging . She was cheating on my dad when they were married, and all she ever wanted was his money. She hated me and my sister and was constantly trying to pitt my dad against us. She really hated me, and she actually got my dad to ban me from their house back when I was a freshman in college. They took away my keys and everything. It was horrible. She was - and still is - a horrible person. In an effort to put more distance between my dad and us, she put him in a  nursing home really far away. It took me two hours to drive there and another two hours to drive home. I was working two jobs still and so I didn't have 4+ hours to kill very often. She made it basically impossible for me to get there during visiting hours. So I hardly ever got to see my dad once he got put in the nursing home. The nursing home was a horrible place, by the way. It smelled awful and it was just so, so bad. I hated it, and I know my dad did too. He kept begging my aunts to move him closer to family but my stepmother had power of attorney and wouldn't move him. 

It was in November of 2012 that everything finally ended. I was working at a preschool then and it was during lunch. We weren't supposed to have our phones with us but I had okayed it with my director to keep mine on me in case of an emergency like this. Thankfully a new girl had arrived that same day to train, and so she was allowed to take over my class for me. Now, you have to understand, this was NOT the first call I had gotten to come and "say goodbye" to my dad. These calls happened all the time. In fact, when I told my best friend, she said, "Well, this has happened a billion times before. He's always pulled through before. He'll pull through this time." Only he didn't. 

My mom came and picked me up because I was too distraught to drive. She drove me out to the nursing home even though she and my dad had been divorced for years. That day - I think it was a Wednesday or Thursday? - we all spent at the nursing home. By this time, my dad was not my dad anymore. He hadn't been out of bed in almost a year, so his limbs had atrophied. He had lost so much weight that he looked like a skeleton lying in the bed. He had gone blind a few weeks before, and by this time he couldn't even talk. It was impossible to know if he knew we were there or not. I hate remembering him that way. I'm actually crying right now just writing about it. 

Anyway, it was the following day when he passed. My whole family was there. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Everyone. There were about twenty of us. We had actually ordered pizzas and brought food and we were eating dinner when my cousin Brandon, who had stayed behind to keep an eye on my dad, came and told us that it was time. So we all crowded around his bed. We had agreed to remove his oxygen, because it was the only thing keeping him alive at that point. So the nurses removed the oxygen and we all crowded around. My dad was alert - as much as could be expected, I suppose. My aunts wanted me and my sister to hold him but the second they put him in my arms I couldn't do it. It was too hard. So my aunts held him in their arms and my sister and I held his hands. We all told him how much we loved him. We could tell the second he passed. And I lost it. I literally just collapsed on the floor, and my sister shoved some medicine down my throat to make me calm down. 

The thing is, I never had a good relationship with my dad. He was a very self-absorbed person and he wasn't good at showing me and my sister that he cared. He didn't really ever say "I love you" to us until he got sick. He didn't really know anything about us. He made sure we were taken care of finanfically, which I am of course grateful for, but I would trade any of my cool gadgets for a real conversation with him. And of course my relationship with him was even more strained after he let my stepmom come between us the way she did. And I knew he was suffering at the end, that he didn't have any sort of quality of life. But losing my dad was the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. 

Even now, certain things will set me off. I was watching Orange is the New Black a couple months back and, in the first season's Christmas special, one of the girls sang "Amazing Grace." One of my cousins sang that at my dad's funeral. I had no idea that I would associate that song with my dad, but I did, and I lost it. I cried so hard. My dad used to eat a lot of peppermints to try and mask the smell of cigarettes, so now every time I smell peppermint I think about my dad. I used to work with a guy who had the same ringtone that my dad always had, and every time his phone would ring I would look around for my dad. I saved the last voicemail my dad ever gave me. I saved it on my phone. It was a happy birthday message, and he started crying at the end of it. It was like he knew that it was the last time he would ever tell me happy birthday. 

I'm sorry. I'm too emotional right now so I can't even finish this post. I'll finish it later if I can calm myself down.