No one ever gets over losing a parent. Your parents are a staple in your life, the ones who support you and help you grow, so when they are gone, you feel like you lost your compass. It's always comforting for me to meet others who have lost parents because they can relate to me about all the emotions that you go through. It's an awful club to be apart of, but knowing others have experienced what you have is such a great feeling because it takes the weight off your shoulders. I will never get my father back, but talking about it seems to make it more real and not only can I come to the realization that it did happen and he did die, but I can also remember that I once lived a wonderful life where he was a part of it.

I have lived two different lives in my short time on this earth. My first life, I had two parents, and I was young and unstoppable. My second life, I was an adult, and crippled with fear. I don’t know if I’ll have another life after this. After my Dad died when I was 13, I died with him it seems. That person i was, my innocence and childhood was gone. He took everything with him. Losing my Dad at such a young age, I never really accepted his death. After he died, I was forced into therapy sessions and I started high school and moved to a new house, and I never grieved about him. I cried and mourned him for about a month after he died, then life went on. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that he was never coming back. The problem with losing him so young, is that I have left him in my first life. I am forgetting him slowly.

It is as if when he died, all my memories went with him. His voice is very vague to me now. I only remember the way he smelled because of an old t shirt I have of his. I don’t remember how it feels to hug him anymore. It is almost as if, in this second life, he never existed, even though I know he did. He existed in a big way. But now living as an adult, I hardly remember what it feels like to be young and have two parents. I don’t remember much about my childhood sometimes. It scares me. I’m not sure if I am making memories up or if they really happened. Sometimes I think of Daddy and I have to concentrate really hard just to remember what it felt like to look at him. The farther away I get from 2007, the year he died, the farther he leaves my mind.

I’m afraid that one day I won’t even remember his voice. It’s unfair to me that I only got 13 years with him. It wasn’t enough to establish a relationship with him. I only remember him as my Dad. I don’t remember him as a person. He is this entity that raised me and someone I found comfort in, but now I think back and realize I never really knew him and it makes it harder for me to accept that he is dead. It has been 8 years and it still doesn’t feel real to me. I talk about him all the time as if he is still here, but at the same time, it feels like in this life as of right now, he was never here, because he never really was here in my adult life.

The fact that my Dad doesn’t know me as an adult pains me. My own father doesn’t know who I am as a person. I’m scared that when my mom dies, that will be my third life. That once she is gone, I will start a new life in which she doesn’t exist anymore, and I have to keep reminding myself that I had a mother, a wonderful one. That’s all it really is when you lose someone. You keep reminding yourself that you once had this person in your life as you are trying to learn how to live without them. I don’t know if I’ll ever learn how to live without my Mom when the time comes.I don’t know how I’ve learned to live without my Dad. I don’t know how I’ve forgotten his voice. I feel as if it never happened sometimes, then other times I feel it all at once. There is no in between. I wish I knew my Dad better. I wish I had that closure. I don’t even have that many memories to hold onto with him, because I only ever knew him as being a father to me and treating me like the child I was. I never got to talk to him, I had to learn about him from other people, and that has been the biggest loss for me.