Abyss

I guess I should start at the beginning, except, I don’t know exactly when this story began. So I’ll start with this. The only man to ever love me whole heartedly was my father, and how my heart belonged to him from the first moment he held me in his arms. He was the kind of man people wrote stories about. A man who so graciously floats through life and spreads happiness like wild fire. He was the man who taught me karate in the kitchen when I was a child, and the same man who years later sat and cried when reading the stories I had written. He was gentle, and kind, and embodied everything that was good in the world.

I could go on for days about how my childhood consisted of sing-alongs in the car and endless laughter, always with my father, and always effortless, but that isn’t what led me to where I am. What led me there was an early morning in October when the sky refused to reveal the sun and I woke to hear my step-mother screaming. I wish that I could say that this day is a distant memory, one in which barely enters my mind, but that would be a lie. It is vivid, it is raw, and it is still debilitating.

The paramedics arrived to find my father in his bed, gasping, clutching his chest. This was the most vulnerable I had ever seen my father. Every fibre of my being ached watching as he writhed in pain and in that moment it felt as though all the good in the world had disappeared and the only thing that existed was crippling, agonising pain. The words pierced my soul once they were spoken and my legs gave in instantaneously. With a sympathetic voice and weary eyes, the man assisting my father spoke cautiously, prepare for the worst.

When you’re young your parents seem invincible, almost as though they are going to be around forever. This is the cruellest lie we allow ourselves to believe. We let it fill us with false hope and dreams. We envision days that have not yet occurred, days when they are there, smiling and enjoying these memories alongside us, all the while taking for granted the time we have with them in that moment. Four words shattered the way I pictured my future. Four words took away the presence of my dad at my 18th birthday. Four words stole my father from my wedding day, robbing me of dancing with my dad for the first time as someone’s wife, stripping me of seeing the glisten in his eyes when he held my son for the first time. Prepare for the worst? Prepare for your entire world to implode seemed more precise.

My family gathered in the waiting room of the hospital and I could feel a tightness in my chest, almost as though I was there with him, sharing his pain. My body ached in a way that it never had before, it had begun to shut down and destroy itself. Every minute felt like an eternity right up until the moment the nurse entered the room. Her eyes caught my gaze and I felt absolutely nothing when she apologised, there was nothing more they could have done for him. I was completely numb.

There is a short moment that occurs, a split second that you experience when you are told that the person you love is gone. Most people mistake this for grief, but grief comes later. This moment is total understanding, and it is absolutely paralysing. It is the realisation that this person is never coming back. It is the replaying of your final moments together. This only lasts a mere second before you are bombarded with denial and you begin to ask yourself why this has happened. The first thing that entered my mind when I was told that my father hadn’t survived was the last words he ever spoke to me. I saw him sitting on the couch reading the newspaper at well after 12am. He lifted his head as he wished me good night, told me that he loved me and said that he’d see me in the morning. In that moment, before I was flooded with denial and grief, I experience what is best described as acceptance. Acceptance that my father was gone and that I would never again hear him say good night. My world shook and the man who I had spent my life gravitating around was gone. Who was I without him?

I am yet to fill the gaping hole left in my chest from his absence and I am uncertain as to whether this ache will ever go away. I remain doubtful.