On the 19th of September 16 years ago I was exposed to the first death of a family member. On this day all those years ago my father passed away. I always get told that I look like him and that I have his eyes and this makes me smile. I was trying to think of something to write that would encaptulate him and his spirit but I always seem to come up short with getting the words to work so have decided to post this instead. As an angst ridden angry teenager I was set a task in Year 10 English class to write a story about an experience that had changed my life. With the pain of my dad passing still fresh in my soul I wrote the following - Deaths Story. I cringe a little bit with reading it back but I didnt want to change it to read more like me, because I owe it to 15 year old me to be true to myself.
As I was typing this story out off a hand written piece of paper it was as if I was in that moment again, I remember what I put in my lunch box the day he died (a Rolo snack that I never ended up eating), what I was eating when the phone rung to say he was gone(two minute noodles from the small microwave container whilst sitting on our lounge room mat) and what I wore to the funeral (a long black dress and a black and white stripped mid drift jumper from Red Backs in MIdland) and it made me get a lump in my throat. 15 year olds with terrible grammar and sentence execution have a habit of stripping the emotions back to bareness and have an innocence that the 30 year old me probably lost a long time ago.
If you knew my dad please take a moment to think of him, for all his failings he was an amazing man and an amazing father and I miss him every day. I have written more about him here if you would like to get to know him a bit better. But here is what 15 year old Kerry thought...
Deaths Story
I was woken on that morning to the sound of the phone, I wasn't bothered to find out who it was so I went back to sleep. About 5 minutes later I was woken up by my mum and the news she had to tell me was not what I wanted to hear. She told me that my dad was in RPH and he wasn't in a very good state. I immediately started to cry because he was everything to me and without him life wouldn't be worth living.
I made my lunch and walked to school the same as I did every day but today was going to be different in a way I couldn't explain at the time. It was as if I knew something bad was going to happen. I went to see Melissa as soon as I got to school to tell her what had happened because I was meant to be going to a dance with her, but that was never to happen.
My classes went by in a blur. I was walking around in a daze and Michelle must have sensed that something was wrong, she asked what was up and I told her "nothing" so she started to guess and on about her third guess she asked me if it was my dad. I looked up at her in surprise because I hadn't told her anything about my dad. She came and sat down next to me and started patting me on that back and saying that she had seen that it made people feel better. It did for a little while and I started to forget what was going on but then suddenly I would remember and it would hit me so hard I thought my heart was going to break. The rest of my classes were much the same. If it hadn't have been for my friends I wouldn't have made it to lunch.
When lunch finally came around I didn't want to leave school to go to the hospital because I didn't want to see what was at the other end, even though I knew it was my dad, the one who had helped give me life, who had made me. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him I just didn't want to see the machines. All the way to the hospital I was thinking of things to say, questions to ask, but when we got to the hospital I knew all hope of those questions being answered was gone.
When we got out of the elevator we came face to face with my uncle and for the second time that day someone said something that I didn't want to hear. The reality of his words took a while to hit but when they did I still didn't want to believe them. It was as if "he isn't going to make it through the night" was the title of a movie or a line in a book. I remember thinking that it couldn't happen and it wasn't happening, but no matter how hard I tried to fool myself I knew it could happen and it was happening and it was happening to me. I cried like there was no tomorrow but still i hoped that some how he would prove them wrong, to show he was a fighter and he wouldn't give up the fight for his life. He did fight but in the end he wasn't strong enough. He stayed until he knew it was safe to go, to venture to greener pastures.
We had already left the hospital by this time and we were at home waiting. Every time the phone rang I felt like I was going to be sick. For the next few hours the phone became my enemy. When the phone call we were waiting for finally came through I knew straight away from the tone in my mothers voice that he was gone. I didn't cry at first, I couldn't. I knew that I had to be strong, not only for myself but for my sister. Straight away I knew what I had to do, who I had to call.
I picked up the phone and dialled the number. Steven answered and he must have sensed that something was up because he started asking questions, questions that I couldnt answer, I asked if Amy was there because I thought it would have been easier to talk to her. He told me that she wasn't so I told him to ring his mum and get her to ring me straight away. In the state that I was in without even really knowing what I was doing I told him that my dad was dead, The phone went really quiet but before he hung up he told me that everything was going to be ok and he would get his mum to ring me back. When she rang back I started to cry because speaking to her made everything more real, more believable. I realised that I was a real person and things like this happen to real people, people like me. I was 14 and living the rest of my life fatherless seemed like the end of the world. It still does.
I went to school on Monday because I couldn't stay home or I would think about it. My friends were really great. They gave me support and made everything a whole lot easier to deal with. I'm surprised my friends don't hate me because I was mean to them. I snapped at them and was just a horrible person. I pitied the people who didn't know what had happened because I was being so mean and so unlike myself they wouldn't have known what was going on inside my head.
Whenever I closed my eyes all I could see was him in the hospital, hooked up to all the machines and not at all looking like himself. Not like the dad who I had grown up with, not like the dad who had taught me to always believe in myself and most of all not like the Dad who had loved me. When he died I felt a feeling I had never felt towards him in such a way. Hatred took over my body, it engulfed me, it became me, it lived my life. I hated him for leaving me, I hated god for taking him, I hated the world because it had life and he didn't but most of all I hated myself for always putting off ringing him.
The Wednesday of his funeral came and I felt sick like I had never felt before. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't even close my eyes. We drove out to the ceremony and we stopped so we could follow the hurse in. All my uncles got out of their cars to follow the hurse up to the chapel. I only then started to believe it was happening. When we walked into the chapel "Delta Dawn" was playing. It was his favourite song, a beautiful song for a beautiful person. When everyone was seated they wheeled the coffin in to the front of the chapel and put it on the alter. I had to say my last goodbyes and it was something that I didn't want to do. I walked up to the alter to place my flowers on the top of the coffin, that was about as much as I could take. I started to cry. Soft sobs were all that came out but what I really wanted to do was scream.
After the ceremony we went back to my uncles house for the wake. My cousin told me she hadn't spoken to me because she didn't know what to say. I guess a lot of people had the same problem. I know I did. I just didn't know what to say to my Grandma, because there was no words that I could say that could explain how I was feeling. I felt bad for her because she had so much heart ache already, first losing her husband (my granddad) and then her youngest son (my dad).
I went to school on Thursday because I knew that's what he would have wanted me to do, to get on with my life the best way that I could. If my dads death taught me anything, it has taught me that your friends are the people who stand by you in your hard times and are always there for you to cry on their shoulder.
I believe that he heard everything I said to him that day and I believe that he knew that I was there trying to help him through but most of all I believe that he knew I loved him. He always used to say "only the good die young so I will live forever" and he will because he will live in my heart and the hearts of those that knew him.
The 19th of September will always be a special day for me because I now know that he is resting in peace. As each day goes by the pain gets a little bit easier to deal with and they say that time heals all wounds, even the ones in your heart
In loving memory of Grant William Wasley - 6th Dec 1958 - 19th Sept 1997
Love and Remembrance
Miss K
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