The Day my Dad Died

"Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. " ~ Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Today, July 16th, has now been nine years since my dad died. I remember that time as if it were yesterday. I said to my sister, "Today is the day our dad died. Today." I told her, "It's today, but then it will be yesterday, and a week since he died, and a month, and a year, and ten years." I knew, that day, how hard life would be for me, in the time ahead - however much time that was - without him in it.

I thought I'd share what I wrote a friend who was enduring a particularly "upside down" time in their life. I wrote about my father, whom they had not met. And what I wrote was my way of trying to let them know I understood their plight. I wrote about July 16th, 2005, the day my dad died...

"What came to my mind when I read your thoughts, on what feels to me as if it is kind of like living in 'no man's land,' is an experience that happened when my dad died. Someday, I hope I can go into more details about everything that occurred re: his death, but now I'll just focus on a few minutes... 

I flew to _____ from _____, my sister picked me up in front of the airport terminal and told me that my dad had died. Until that moment, I had only known that my dad was critically injured; I had not thought that I would never see him again. 

I got in her car and we started the drive from _____ to ____ - over a six hour drive away - to get to our mom.

I remember somewhere along the way we stopped at a Walmart to go to the restroom and for my sister to go get bottles of water and Kleenex tissues. While I sat waiting at a table, right inside the entrance to the store, I was softly crying, and I looked around at everything that surrounded me, all the things and the people going about their every day business of shopping and I wanted to stand up and scream out: EVERYONE, STOP! STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING! MY FATHER IS DEAD! HE IS NO LONGER HERE! AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN ACT AS IF THE WORLD HAS NOT STOPPED TURNING ON ITS AXIS!!! 

And then I just put my face in my hands and cried harder because I knew what the world had just lost, but none of the people walking around me in that massive store, talking and laughing, knew; they did not feel the earth shake, or see the sun's light diminish, they were simply ignorant to the knowledge that a small part of greatness was gone...