“december comes like every year, but you don’t show your face around here anymore. i should have known you’d be moving on some time.” - song for lora by the great american soundtrack
for those of you who don’t know, the great american soundtrack is a local band from philadelphia, pa. their name comes from their purpose, writing songs that “will become the soundtrack to your life.” song for lora is a song that does just that. song for lora was written by kurt (the lead singer) about his deceased sister, lora.
i relate so much to this song, especially the line i posted above. four years ago, my dad died, and things just haven’t been the same since then. growing up, my dad always told me that he would live forever, and i would never have to worry about him leaving us. naively, i believed him, hoping i would never have to deal with him leaving my mom and i.
i still remember the day it happened like yesterday. it was a thursday, it was snowing. my brother had just gotten home from iraq, and he wanted us all to go out to dinner and celebrate. my dad felt sick and we ended up not going because of it. “i hate you, i wish you were dead.” i still remember saying that, angry at him because we couldn’t go out to dinner. if i could go back and change one thing, i would make myself never have said that. it’s probably the biggest regret of my life.
later on in the night, about 11, we ended up calling the ambulance because my dad was coughing up blood. he and my mom went to the hospital in the ambulance and my brother came and drove me. my mom didn’t want me to come, but i really wanted to, because i had off from school the next day and i didn’t want to be home alone. my dad was in the emergency room, and my mom and i stayed up all night in the waiting room. i just remember staring out the window watching the snow fall, not thinking about what was happening to my dad.
at some point i ended up falling asleep. i remember my mom waking me, telling me we had to move because my dad was being moved to intensive care. i remember being in the elevator with him on the hospital bed. i remember falling asleep in another waiting area. i woke up again in the morning, my dad still in intensive care. i remember bugging my mom to take me down to the cafeteria for breakfast. i had pancakes and sausage, which were not very good at all.
throughout the day we had a lot of visitors, my brother and his wife, my aunt and cousins, some family friends. when it got later in the night, i remember i got hungry, so my aunt, my cousin, and her friend took me down to the cafeteria. i remember having pizza. we were having a good time, joking around, talking about whatever. i remember we went back up, and that’s when it happened. they brought us into a room and told us that my dad had died when we were gone.
i didn’t believe it at first, but then it set in. i remember sitting underneath the table and just crying for what seemed like forever. everyone told me it would be okay, i tried to believe them, but i couldn’t. i knew it wouldn’t, and it still kind of isn’t. that was probably the absolute worst day of my life. i remember for the first month or so, i would go to bed hoping to wake up and have my dad home and find out that it was all a terrible nightmare. every day i wake up, and it’s true. my dad is gone, despite all of his promises to always be there.
