Heaven's not a place that you go when you die It's that moment in life when you actually feel alive

I got a little inspired from a blog I just read to write about my dad.

When I was a kid I was a Daddy's girl through and through, then I became a teenager. We didn't have the greatest relationship at all. He liked to drink..quite a bit. It actually caused my mom to divorce my dad. He was very demanding, I get my stubbornness from by dad, for real. He wanted everything done now, not in two seconds either. It was the end of the world if things didn't happen the way or time he wanted. It used to drive me literally bananas! No matter what he did I loved him. He was my dad. We had some fun times. :)

We didn't always have the greatest relationship, considering he was a complete ass. at times. Some of the things he did at the time were unforgivable. When I turned 16 he wrote an ad in the local paper saying "Happy 16th Birthday Becky P.S. I still live in town". I was so pissed off and hurt. At the time we weren't talking, more like I wasn't talking to him, but at the time I was thinking what gave him the right to write that in the paper? About 3 and half years ago I was on my way home from work and smashed my mom's van with 2 deer. At the same time. At this time we were talking so he said I could barrow his truck so I could get to work. Keep in mind, his truck was a 1989 Dodge Ram. It was huge! I had it for a couple days and I was playing bingo with a friend of mine and her family and when we're on our way home I have 4 or 5 voicemails from my parents. So I call my mom and she says to get home now. So I get home and my aunt is sitting there waiting for me. My dad called the cops on my mom saying that she stole his truck! I was so pissed! So my aunt followed me on the way to my dad's to take it back (if it wasn't taken back by that night the cops would've had to write up a report about his accusation). I didn't even take him the keys I was so pissed, my aunt did. I borrowed my cousin's sweet jeep until we got back my mom's van. Needless to say I didn't talk to him for a long time.

Fast forward to spring 2009. I haven't been talking to my dad for about 6 months or so, and I get a call from my uncle who says my dad's sick and he's taking him home. My uncle lives about 4 hours away and my dad was in the hospital by him. Long story short my dad and I are on speaking term, considering the situation. Come to find out my dad is diagnosed with renal cell cancer (for anyone that doesn't know, that's kidney cancer). I found this out when I was on a break from work. Yep, my dad told me when I was on break, so I had to go back into work and act like everything is a-ok in my life, when in reality I'm in utter and complete shock. We find out from his oncologist that the only thing they could possibly do is radiation to give him more time, since at the time my dad was 70, had congestive heart failure, diabetes, and one kidney is shut down, and the other one is only working at 10%. It never really hit me. I was in complete shock, and when I was telling my friends, they were "Oh I'm so sorry!" it never hit me then either. I was in complete denial.

My dad got severely sick from the radiation, so he went into a nursing home since he couldn't take care of himself anymore. That was the worst decision that was ever made. He got severely worse. He started to show the signs of dementia, which runs in the family, and he got a blood clot in his arm, so they sent him to the hospital an hour away. Come to find out he had bed sores! I was so pissed! That place needs to be shut down. They don't take care of their patients at all. They just leave them in their rooms all day. He was in and out of ICU for a few weeks. An Oncologist came in, and and they believe that the cancer spread to his liver. My dad always had a beer gut, but at that time he looked like he was pregnant with triplets. His kidney's were totally shut down. So the decision was made to put him into hospice care, and if he made it the weekend they would move him to a location that was closer for me. At the time we were driving an hour there and an hour back every day. We went to see him on saturday, and that would rough. He was on morphine. He was just laying there. He wouldn't respond to your voice, and by you holding your hand. By this time I was on a leave of absence at work, thankfully. I was spending all of my time at the hospital. We left for the day and we were gonna take sunday and just chill after spending all the time at the hospital for the past two weeks. Late saturday night I got the call that he passed away. The hospital tried call me, but I didn't answer so my mom woke me up and told me.

I still can't believe that he's gone. It will be two years in August that he's been gone. In ways it doesn't seem like he's actually gone. It just seems like it one of those times that we weren't talking. I have his ashes, and I know I need to take the final step and spread them somewhere, but I honestly don't know if I can, or ever will be able to. That's gonna be one rough day.