How It Started

It all started when my Dad had enlarged lymph nodes in his armpit and no one knew what caused it. That is until one Sunday morning when my Mother, Father and I went to a Bob Evan's to eat breakfast and my father started feeling bad before we could even get seated. As we were walking down the sidewalk towards our car, he was passing out with every step. By the time we got to the end, he was almost totally unconscious and my Mom was practically yelling for him to stay awake, passerby's walked up to us and helped out, and my Mom called 911. My Dad spent about a half hour in the ambulance getting checked out before he told them he didn't want to take the ambulance. So my Mom and I drove him over to the hospital, where he was admitted. I wasn't allowed to stay too long, so Mom called her Mom and she took me back to her place, where I sat on a rock and cried.

A little less then a week later, I was allowed to visit my Father at the hospital and they dropped the news of his cancer as if I knew already, and kind of like it was nothing. They told me in mid-conversation and moved on, and I was like, “What?!” And they told me, like yeah, he has cancer, lymphoma, to be specific. The way they told me, well, that ruled the way that I treated the whole situation... Like it was nothing. Dad was going through these cancer treatments, and it was alright because he was going to live. For eight months, that was what I believed. There was something inside of me that knew that wasn't true, but I didn't dare think that. Then came the day that Mom sat me down and told me the worst news I've heard... Dad was dying, and that day was pretty much his last day. I had one thought that made my Mom cry, which was; So Dad's never going to walk through that door again? Sadly, she said yes and I burst out crying into my brother Nate's chest.

That night, I asked my Mom if I could sleep in bed with her, but she got a call to go to the hospital to see Dad because he asked for her. I asked if I could go with and she told me that it's up to me. So I went to the hospital to watch my father die. I held his hand the entire night and sang him a song, and left about half hour before he officially passed. And that's when my whole world crashed in front of me. I was 16, three months away from my 17^th birthday, and I was slowly going insane.