Untitled Part 1and 2

There are some things that no matter how old I get, I could never hope to understand. Like, how guys have a language all their own. They can’t say anything the slightest bit heartfelt to one another, without adding “man” or “dude” to the sentence. Or, how my mom always walks into the room when the fight looks like its my fault. But, when I was twelve years old, something happened that was life changing. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a little farther.

It was my last year before I was thirteen. In my mind I was almost an adult. I was on top of the world. I had a great family, okay so they got annoying every once in a while, and I had a small group of pretty good friends. I didn’t have a best friend though, she had moved to Europe two years before. Then Daddy started going to the doctors a lot, he kept telling us that it was just a sinus infection. The doctors gave him medicine and stuff to sniff up his nose but even after weeks of medication he never got any better. Then one day he came home and told us that he was going to have to have surgery, he had brain cancer.

I know I should have kind of freaked out, but he was so calm about it that it didn’t seem like a big deal at all. He told us exactly what the doctors would be doing and to me it was just like if he was going to get his hair cut, that is until the day before the procedure, which just happened to be Easter Sunday. Before we left my aunts house the whole family gathered around to pray over my dad. All of the women in the family were crying and even my dad seemed uneasy. Mom had planned for my siblings and I to spend the night at our grandparents house so that she could spend the day at the hospital with Daddy. It was only as dad drove away with mom that the realization that this was a big deal crept slowly into my mind.

The next day mo didn’t cal to tell us how the surgery went, she called to say she was coming over to tell us herself. At this point worst-case scenarios started playing vividly through my head, but I couldn’t show any of it or risk unsetting my younger brother and sister. When mom arrived everyone gathered around the living room, anxious to hear what she had to say. She told us that there had been complications following the surgery. Dad had had a seizure and was now heavily medicated and connected to a lot of tubes. The news didn’t really sink in. All that mattered was that my daddy was alive.

I was a little worried, but again I had to hold it all in or else my brother and sister would get hysterical. Mom then told us that we would be spending a little more time at grandma’s than she had expected. It wasn’t until really late a few nights later, the night that we found out dad had pneumonia on top of everything else, that I suddenly broke out of my stage of denial. I started imagining what life would be like without Dad, my Dad who had sang me to sleep when I was little and taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels, who took me to the movies and still kissed me goodnight every night. I couldn’t understand why this had happened. This was the kind of thing that happened to other people, not to us. Why us? Why me? I realized that I had taken everything for granted and the old saying “You don’t know what you have until its gone “ kept bouncing around in my mind.

Since my siblings were asleep I knew that it was okay to cry, not that I thought I could have stopped the tears even if they had been awake. All of the tears that I had been holding back for days came spilling out. I cried until all my tears were gone and prayed to God that my Daddy would be okay, that I was sorry for everything that I had ever done wrong and that I would do better if only dad would come home. You see, somehow I had gotten it into my head that all of this was my fault, that it was punishment for something I had done wrong.

After I was done crying I began to wish that I had someone to talk about this to. Talking to my sister about it was out of the question, mom was always at the hospital and I didn’t think I could spill my guts to my grandparents. My girlfriends were great for just hanging out with but it didn’t seem possible to talk to them about anything more serious that my latest crush. Then I remembered Matt a guy friend that moved away even before my best girlfriend did, I knew I couldn’t really talk to him about it so in my mind I told him everything, and when it was his turn to talk I imagined him saying all of the things that I wanted to hear.

We were still at my grandparents house two weeks later. I don’t know how I got through that time other than always keeping myself busy. I was in a lot of activities at the time, ballet, AWANA, basketball and helping with a huge yard sale at my church. A few weeks after the pneumonia went away Daddy got meningitis. I remember writing in my diary one night “I never realized how much I loved him until now when I haven’t seen him or hugged him or kissed him goodnight in three weeks.

They were going to move him to another hospital but then he developed a fever so they couldn’t. Mom told us that he probably wouldn’t be home for at least a month. I wanted more than anything just to see him but I wasn’t allowed in the ICU because of my age. They had to remove a part of his skull because his brain was swelling.

One day mom came to see us and brought with her two pictures she had taken of dad. I can’t really describe how horrifying it was to me. Here was my dad, the person I always looked up to, who was normally so strong and healthy looking, in a hospital bed surrounded by machines. There were tubes and bandages all over him. His hair was partly shaven and there was a large dip in the right side f his head where they took the bone out. Looking back, I don’t know how I didn’t just break down in front of everyone.

A few days later we moved back to our house. It wasn’t really home without Daddy though. Mom managed to get me into the ICU to see dad. He was asleep the whole time we were there. Even though he didn’t talk I know that he knew I was the because when I reached out a took a hold of his hand he squeezed my hand in response. He had staples and stitches in his head and he was connected to a lot of machines by tubes. Mom kept saying we had to leave but I just wanted to stay.

The meningitis had gone away and he was expected to be home in a month, but when my brother’s birthday came around, over a month and a half after dad’s surgery, he was still wasn’t home. The next day thought they moved him from the hospital to a rehab hospital. I don’t have any memories after that until about a month later, when a former art teacher offered to come over every day and watch us while mom was at the hospital with dad. I remember crying all the time over nothing and mom always being tired.

Then I found out that my best friend was coming to visit from Germany! It was great to see her again! We went to the mall, to a tea house, scrap booked together and cried while we watched “A Walk to Remember”. Then it was time for me to go away to camp. It was only a week long but I worried about dad a lot. Although it was nice to get away for a while.

I have almost no memories at all for a long while. So I am going to have to skip all the way to a October, four months after dad went into surgery. The doctors told us that he should be able to come home in about two weeks! I was so excited! He did come home on October 18th. We decorated the whole house and had a big party.