"It's supposed to be me in that box..."

A true story of a private moment between an ill father and his dead daughter's body. The father is mine. The daughter is my sister.

Someone once asked me, "What's the most heartbreaking experience you've ever had?" This is my answer, and it's completely true:

Seeing my wheelchair-bound father use all of his strength to stand next to his daughter’s open coffin, touch her face one last time, and say, “Sweetie, it’s supposed to be me in that box.”

He didn’t know I was in the room too. He had been sick with heart disease for years and was unable to walk anymore. He could just move from his bed to his wheelchair. His daughter-my sister-died very unexpectedly at age 34.

The funeral was supposed to begin at 1pm, but my father wanted to go early to make sure everything was prepared for the visitors. At least, that was his excuse to leave before the rest of us. So he used his mechanical wheelchair to get himself to the funeral home (which was just down the block) before everyone else.

I got there about ten minutes later. I walked into the room and stopped when I saw him standing up. I hadn’t seen him do that in years. I was also in shock at the sight of my dead sister. I hadn’t seen her for three years before her death.

I saw my father, who was always the strongest man I knew when I was growing up, struggle to stand from his wheelchair, catch his breath, weep openly at his daughter's side, and tell her those words:

"Sweetie, it's supposed to be me in that box."

After he said that to her, I walked out of the room. He never knew I witnessed that.

But I knew then that he was going to give up his fight against heart disease. Which he did. He had been fighting hard to lose weight and improve his heart function. After that day, he quit trying. He was dead within a year.

My parents had already bought two grave sites for themselves. They never figured that one of their children would beat them to the grave. My sister ended up getting what should have been my father's gravesite. My father got cremated so he could go next to her, but also leave room for my mother’s cremated remains when her time comes. (They can put two boxes of cremated remains in one plot here.)

Author's Note

I originally posted this on a Q-and-A website, and I was surprised at how well received it was. Like most of my work, this is just a quick version, and I'm considering options for expanding it and publishing it. What do you think? Would it make a good longer story?