“I didn’t bother seeing my father’s face. Because I didn’t want any trace of him lying in a big case. Wishing to be sprayed with mace, so it could temporarily blind my eyes from this sad surprise. Wanting it to be a horrifying lie that I would be willing to buy. Watching my mother cry and my uncle try to hide his tears. None of this I wanted to neither see nor hear. This fear had come true, which left many sad and blue. And still feels like a long lasting flu. My father has doze off to sleep and left me to weep. As the casket goes deeper into the ground; the crowd is no longer around. The grass grows and the wind continuously flows. And all I am left to do is drop a rose."

Everything that you read above was the most difficult thing that this eleven year old girl went through at the time. Everyone was surprised that this healthy 33 year old man died all of a sudden. I truly wasn’t surprised! I prepared myself for this day. I cried myself to sleep as a young child, because I felt there was going to be a time where it would be too late. A time where there would be no one around to revive my father. What I feared the most was finally over; a sense of relief. You might say to yourself: Why would a young child prepare to be fatherless? How could a child feel a sense of relief from losing a parent?

My father had a late onset of type 1 diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic (lifelong) disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. Many patients are diagnosed when they are older than age 20. In this disease, the body makes little or no insulin. My father was diagnosed with
diabetes when he was 26 years old. As a young child this meant a death sentence for my father, because I was too young to understand the disease he had. When I was about nine or ten I begin to understand a little better. The little monitor determined what condition my father was in at the time. The number expressed on the monitor couldn’t be too low or too high. As a child I would pray that the numbers shown on the monitor would be normal. My mother gave me constant reminders of what to do if my father started to act strange. In my mind I even acted out stereos of any possible daring situation.

As a young child I witnessed many situations where my father’s blood level was too low. By seeing these traumatic events over and over my young mind begun to think that my father’s days were numbered. I embraced my father tightly every chance I got. Really not knowing if the time would come again. I viewed my father as a superstar. He was the first black Master Technician L1 Instructor at Bridgestone Firestone; located in downtown Augusta. Everyone was very proud of my father’s accomplishments. But one fatal phone call placed a dark cloud over this excitement.
School was out and summer began. I was very excited about going to the 6th grade and couldn’t wait to go on vacation with my family. Wednesday, yeah Wednesday started out pretty normal. I ran down stairs early that morning to hug and kiss my father goodbye as he walked out the door. Not knowing that he was walking out of my life for good. I still try to capture in my mind the last time I saw him smile. Seeing it through my mind makes me want to smile back. Later on that day the phone ringed, I answered. A man with a low voice on the other line wanted to speak to my mother. I picked up another phone and heard what the man was telling my mother. My father had left for lunch and never returned back to work. My mother’s face was full of despair and grief. We rushed to my grandmother’s house, and my brothers and I waited for what we hoped would not be true. I cried till my eyes were swollen red. I prayed for hours and held on to the hope that he would call. He didn’t call nor pick up his cell phone. My father couldn’t hear my calls, because he was already gone. My mother didn’t directly tell me the news. I saw her woebegone face which was more then she could describe at the time. People were crying all around me, but I was rather phlegmatic at the time. I didn’t know what to feel or what to do. I just sat and looked at my surroundings.

There is no possible way to get over the death of a person. The only way to me is to deal with the cards that you have been dealt. I just have to deal with reality. Saying your goodbyes at the burial site is not enough. You have to mentally move on in accepting this great sorrow. I get really sad sometimes, but there will be another day. Another day for thinking anew.