My dad gets worse and worse.

A month and a half passed, and my dad was getting worse each day. 

Two weeks before his passing, the last thing he wanted to do was go camping up in Maine. We had to bring up his feeding tube because he could no longer eat very well, but we made it up there. 

I had my best friend come up with us because she was and still is my support system. She’s been there for me through everything, so it was really special to me that she came up with us even though my dad was sick. Dad said he wanted me to hang out with her, so I didn’t have to see him sick all the time. But at night I wouldn’t be able to go to bed because I was scared that he would pass in his sleep. Each night I would go into his room several times and wake him up just to see if he was still alive and okay.

When we got home from Maine, things really started to go downhill. He was falling down the stairs, or he would try to walk to the bathroom and couldn’t because he would always fall down on the way. I would wake up every night to my mom screaming because my dad had fallen again and had hit his head again. He hit his head a lot during those last weeks.

One night he fell and hit his head on the corner of his nightstand. He was bleeding everywhere and even got a huge black eye. He was so weak that he eventually became dead weight. My mom and I would do all we could just to carry him back to bed. Eventually, we had to get a hospital bed for our living room and he would just sit there all day.

It was getting harder and harder to keep it together.

One day I stayed after school to go to a football game, and I called my mom to ask her if I could sleep over at a friend’s house. She told me that my dad wasn’t doing well. I remember I yelled at her because I just kept denying the fact that my dad was dying and I would trick myself into thinking he was fine. 

I ended up sleeping over my friend’s and the next day I came home, finding that one of the nurses from hospice was there. She told us that he didn’t have long. 

I went in to say my goodbyes, but I couldn’t stand to see him like that. I started crying and the very last words I ever said to my dad were “I love you daddy and you’re my best friend, and you always will be. I love you.” After I said that, I rushed out because I couldn’t see him like he was. 

Then about 30 minutes to an hour later, my aunt and I were outside and a huge tree fell. At that exact moment my mom came out telling us that he was gone. 

I just sat on my porch with no emotion, while one by one of my family members arrived. I was numb.