We go through life day by day not knowing what each day will bring us. As the sun rises each morning, we think about what we will overcome that day. We think about how much work we will actually accomplish, we think about the laughs that we will have throughout the day, we think about what meals we are going to eat. We never think about how it could be someone's last day on this earth, let alone someone that we love.
Death is something that happens to everyone eventually but no one thinks about how soon it can change one's life. You never think that one fall morning that you would be waking up for the last time with both parents.
September 26, 2004, is a day that forever changed not just my life but all my family and friend's as well.
This day was just an average Sunday in the fall and everything was all right until late afternoon. Late afternoon came around and I come home to ambulances outside my house. After I enter my house, I found out someone very close to me had passed away. My dad, my father, the man that was supposed to help guide me through life. I found out that he passed away from a sudden heart attack. As a 7-year-old, death was kind of a foreign concept for me to grasp. Yes, family members in my family have passed away prior to this day, but this was different. It was different because it was someone in my immediate family, someone who was a team with my mother.
When this day came around, I just turned 7 years old a month before. My sister was 10 years old and we both were confused at how could someone just be with us one hour of our lives and the next hour be gone?
I had family members in and out of my house all week long after his death. I met more friends of the family that week and month then I ever did in my whole life before this. Everyone came with food or flowers to help mend the sadness that we were feeling.
Some people even brought pictures and memories of my dad for my me and my sister to help remember him as we got older. The thought of having to know someone through memories was just something that I couldn't fathom. Till to this day all I have to remember my father is memories. I don't even memories of him at any family party, or my sweet 16.
It's been 12 long years without you.
12 years has gone by so quick that I feel like it's only been 12 hours without you here. 12 years have gone by, and when people find out about my dad passing the first thing they say is sorry and that he was too young and then try to change topics as quick as they can to make it less awkward. 12 years have gone by and yes it still hurts, but when people say sorry and that he was too young that makes you think back to all the new memories you had to create without him here. Yes, 12 years is a long time, but as time goes on, it still will feel like a short amount of time since he passed.
Each year on September 26, things are a little harder to get through but I know my dad would want me to remember him in the best ways possible and try not to think about the years without him, but think about the years that I have ahead of me in my life.
