I seen myself in a stranger's face today. It was like seeing a ghost. 

I just finished having the worst phone call, or pretty damn close to the worst phone call...ever.

My dad is sick. Apparently has been so for a while now. I dont know whats going on. Someone slipped up, accidentally, and thats how I found out. Screwed up isnt is? My family tends to want to protect me. I guess they think I would be sad, or angry, or not me. Who wouldnt be though? It makes me hate people.

I remember writing this paper for a class I had a few years back. We had to write about our biggest fear in life. I wrote that my biggest fear woud be my dad dying before me. The reason...Because if i died first...i knew my dad would be there, to take care of everyone, to take care of everything. But if he were to die first, who would take care of all of us?

I seen my dad cry for the first time, on my front porch, five years ago. His look was completely filled with sorrow and sadness, but he walked up to me, hugged me, wiped my tears away, and told me I would be okay.

 I was the one who woke up to find my daughter not breathing. I was the one who gave CPR to her for fifteen minutes. I was the one to call 911. I was the one to wipe blood off from around her mouth and face. I was the one to leave my lifeless daughter lie there to move my son away into a different room, so he didnt see anything. I was the one who had to make phone calls to my parents, to tell them to come quick, and was not able to tell them why. I was the one who had to speak to police, and detectives, and corriners, on Easter Sunday. I was the one who watched a police officer pour my son cereal to keep him distracted. I was the one who walked with the medical examiner and staged her one and only baby doll in the places my daughter had been laying down in over the past few weeks. I watched as they took pictures of her things, her bed, her clothes. her everything. I was the one who watched as they took her body and placed it into the back of a black SUV, along with her things. All of this, I did, by myself, with no one there but me and my little boy. I did all of this, without shedding one tear. Until I walked out my front door and seen my dad.

What would I do without my dad?

When the medical examiner called me to tell me the cause of death two days later...he said it was something that would not have been curable, if known about prior. She had a hole in her heart. It bled out into her lungs while she was asleep that night, which caused her to stop breathing. She had already been gone for three hours before I found her. My dad took me outside, sat on the bench with me, for what seemed to be five hours, and just sat there. Complete silence. When everyone else was afraid to come close to me, or didnt know what to say, or wanted to give me my space. My dad sat there with me.