This past weekend RcktMan's father passed away. I don't really know much about him because I have only been reading his posts for a very short time. What I do know is that losing a loved one is never easy. Today he blogged about the intense loss he felt and suddenly the grief I felt when my own father passed away was brought home.

My father passed away on May 17, 2003. He and my mom were eating lunch in the kitchen when he slumped over in his chair. The doctors told my mom later that he was probably dead before he hit the table and no amount of speed on her part in calling 911 or speed in the paramedics responding would have helped at all. One minute he was there. One minute he wasn't. I remember the day as if it were yesterday.

I had spent the night at my boyfriend's house and needed to go home and change. I remember my cell phone beeping that I had message as I got off the subway but I didn't check it right away. I went home, showered, changed clothes and was packing some things to take back to his house when I thought to check my messages. There was a message from my brother telling me to call home, that Dad was sick and had been taken to the hospital.

I must give you some background here. In 2000 my mother suffered a heart attack. I didn't get the message about her being ill until the next morning and the message my brother had left on my home voice mail was "Jeff, mom's had a heart attack and is in the hospital." Click, nothing. The voice mail said it was from 10 p.m. the night before. There were no follow-up calls. Nothing about what hospital she was in, how she was doing...nothing. It was now almost 12 hours later and I had no idea what was going on. This was before we all had cell phones, and I ended up calling 5 hospitals before I discovered what hospital she was in. Needless to say I was pissed. I didn't speak to my brother for weeks after this happened.

So when I got the message from my brother about my father I was a little annoyed that there wasn't more information. So I called my brother. His boyfriend (He's gay too.) answered the phone. I asked how my father was and there was a long pause and then Jerry said, "He's gone." I hung up. I couldn't cope. I couldn't comprehend what I had just heard. I went to my living room and I sat down on the couch numb. I wanted to crawl into a hole. I didn't know what to do. So I called my friend D.C. who had just lost his father. I wanted someone to tell me what to do. Of course no one was answering, not even my boyfriend D.L.C.

Finally, I called my brother back and I got the details. He told me what he knew and then gave the phone to my mother. I calmed her as best I could, told her that I would be home as soon as I could and hung up. It was then that I lost it. I went back to the living room sat on the couch and cried until the phone rang.

The rest of the week is a blur. I don't remember much of it at all. I know that D.L.C. went home with me and we got there that night. I remember the next day was spent making arrangements. The next day was visitation and the next day was the funeral. But the details are gone. I put myself on auto-pilot to get thru the long days ahead. It wasn't until after the funeral was over, all of his affairs put into order and I was back home that I really started to grieve. I was standing in D.L.C.'s apartment and I started to cry and sob hysterically. I cried for what seemed like hours.

I still miss my Dad. We had had a love/hate relationship while I was growing up. But had come to an understanding of each other in the past few years and actually enjoyed each other's company. I still wish that I had gotten to say good-bye. I wish that he had lived to see me finish my graduate degree. I wish a lot of things.
The one good thing that has come out of his dying though is that I truly treasure my mother. She drives me crazy sometimes but I realize that our time together is limited so even though I don't always feel like it, I call her several times a week. And I let her be as much a part of my life as she wants to be. When it's time to say good-bye to my mother I don't want any regrets.