I’m sorry Liv. I’m sorry your in pain. The love I feel reading your post brought tears. I lost my sister 5 months ago. She was only 54. She was more like a mother to me. I feel exactly the same way. I was able to be with her , I brought her home. She was in the hospital and there was no more anyone could do. She was aware and I couldn’t tell her the truth. That she was dying. I had an ambulance bring her home. She had cancer but was undiagnosed because of pandemic. When finally they found the reason for her pain it had ravaged her. The doctor told me maybe 2 weeks. But I couldn’t tell her. So I told her we are going home and I’ll find a different doctor. They gave loads of morphine and sedatives. And I just payed in bed with her and lied. Told her she was just sleepy. And that everything would be ok. It wasn’t though. I kept thinking I was killing her with the morphine. I would lay me head on her chest and listen to her heart. The night she did die I left for a drive. I screamed and screamed like a lunatic. I can literally sane I lost my mind. No one told me or maybe I didn’t want to know what grief felt like. I went back and got in bed with her. Held her beautiful hands. Rubbed her beautiful blonde hair and told her how much she was loved. And how sorry I was. How sorry I was that this was happening. When she did die I could get out of bed with her. I was laying half on her. For 3 hours I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t call my mom. I couldn’t bear to tell her that her daughter died. I felt the weight unlike anything before. I am heartbroken. I’m trying to learn to live in the world without her. But I keep thinking why couldn’t anyone help her? Why did they give up? I would have done anything for her. I know the grief is because I loved her so much. But I’m angry too. I see people moving on in their lives and I can’t. I dream about her. For weeks after I would wake up screaming. I have a therapist. And I know I have PTSD and I do feel it’s worse because I knew and love her. I saw her body disintegrate I saw her pain. And I lied to her over and over. Telling her everything would be fine. I have no advise to give only to say your not alone. I don’t talk to family or friends because my grief appears on a different level. My mother can’t even mention her name. I don’t talk about her except on these platforms. Where I know people like you get it. Here I can just be like wtf happened? Did this really happen? Am I suppose to live in a world without her and be ok? How is that possible? I couldn’t get out of bed for a month after she was gone. I was consumed with grief. I still am. I just try every day. One day here. And one day there. Everything reminds me of her. I’ll see a girl with long blonde hair and immediately think of my sweet sister. Her favorite foods. Her favorite show. Even football. All roads lead me to her. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry for me. I’m sorry your dad and my sister went through what they did. Tracy

One week from today, it will have been 18 months since my dad was alive. That statement seems unfathomable, but it's true. Honestly, it feels like an eternity.

I am beginning to forget what it felt like to have him in my life, to be around him, to talk with him everyday. When I picture his face in my mind, he is now blurrier. The details of his face are missing. I can see the outline, his eye and other features, but his freckles and wrinkles are gone. I can only see him as he was in the few pictures I have saved on my phone. The ones that I look at all the time have us in it, whether I am five, fourteen, sixteen, or seventeen.

My mom sent me one picture of him that she took when she visited him in the hospital towards the end. She was a consultant in making and an advocate for the decision to try to get him home in the end. The picture of him is from thirteen days before he died, and eighty-two days since I last saw him in person. He was sick and ungroomed. He was not the happy and healthy father who loved me for eighteen years, and for that, I can't look at those photos very often. I'm trying to remember him as he was, but I also want as may memories as I can since there aren't many. I don't know what to do.

When I try to hear his voice in my head, I no longer know if that is truly what he sounded like, or if I made it up. The few shirts that I have of his don't smell like him as much anymore, but instead smell like the laundry detergent or me or the deodorant that he used whose stains are beginning to fade. I don't know what I'll do when the smell finally fades. I've already lost so much, and now the small remnants that I have left are leaving me too. And every time something like this happens, I lose him all over again. A couple months ago, one of our friendship bracelets that I wore broke while I was sleeping, and I cried for a week. Now I have them stored in a jewelry box instead of keeping them with me wherever I go. A seam is ripping in his sweatshirt that I wear all the time, and so I'm now wearing it less to preserve it. It's not fair. Life should leave me in peace with what little I have left of my dad, but it's like it wants me to suffer more. I just don't know what to do, or how much more of this I can take...

Today is a terrible day. Today marks

a year and a half

eighteen months

seventy-eight weeks

five hundred and forty-six days

since my dad has passed.

It's been even longer than that since I last spoke to him. Even longer since I last saw him in person, since I last hugged him goodbye. I still can't believe it. It feels like forever, a never ending forever that will just continue to grow. How is that possible? How is that fair? How can I be expected to go on the rest of my life without my father? How can my life just continue on without him?

Well that last part isn't exactly true. Yes, my heart still beats, and my lungs still breathe, but my life ended the day he died. Maybe even the day he started declining, or the day I realized he was going to die. I am no longer a person who lives. I am a walking zombie, going through the motions until my time finally comes to die too. I just do what I have to to get through it, but "getting through it" certainly should not count as living.

Not all of my days are like this. Sometimes, every once in a while, I'll find an activity that'll "make the world a little kinder/gentler", as my therapist likes to say. Those days, life seems to be okay, more manageable, more bearable somehow. I don't question it, because that makes the following days worse. How can my pain, my grief, be lighter on a certain day? I don't deserve to feel lighter because my light in my life, my dad, is gone forever.

That usually makes these days so much worse. On days like these, I sit in my room and cry. I cry because my dad is gone, because it's been so long since our last everything, because I have to continue my life without him, because I miss him so much, etc. I dedicate these days to feeling my grief so that I can "reel in" my feelings on the rest of the days. Some days, I can't. Some days I just feel so terrible, for no other reason than the fact that my dad is gone. Maybe there was a certain reminder: a dream with him in it, an upcoming anniversary. Maybe I just had a bad day in general. Either way, my grief goes up to an 11/10. I feel every second, every heart beat, every breath, without him, and it sucks. It really sucks. 

So that's why I hate today, and every single day in general.