And she always sleeps when it's raining.

I have the firm belief that the world we live in nowadays is one in which no one can truly escape having a real burden upon them. Granted, burdens are different for each person – for some, it may be heartbreak, for some, it may be loss, but whatever it is, we still have our own defining struggles. For me, the main focus of my pain would probably be losing my dad over the summer. I’ve had other things that have been hard, of course – who hasn’t? – but that’s certainly been the pivotal moment for me.

It was just another day of the summer. I was sitting at the table in my dining room, drinking some apple juice and texting a friend. The highlight of my coming weeks was getting my senior pictures taken in three days, then going to rifle camp the following week. I got a phone call from my stepdad, asking for Darren, my godfather’s, number. While I thought it was a little strange, he used a good excuse (“I just found a guy who wants to buy some restaurant equipment.”) so I didn’t think anything about it. It was thirty minutes later, when my mom called for my Aunt Lisa’s number, that I started to get suspicious. She wasn’t so careful, saying that no one had gotten in touch with my dad over the weekend, which started the worry to build in my stomach. I suddenly remembered that I had texted him Saturday, asking him about the trip to New York we were planning together. He hadn’t texted me back, something that was a little odd for him. Concerned, I texted him again, with no reply. Perturbed, I tried to call and got a message that informed me that his voicemail box was full. My dad was a salesman and his phone held his life. His voicemail box was never full.

Ever have a bad feeling that something is going wrong, like really wrong? Well, 90% of the time, those feelings are totally wrong. Well, it REALLY SUCKS when you realize the feeling is right.

About that time the phone rang again, with my mom on the line. She asked to talk to Amber, my sister. When Amber got the phone, Momma instructed her to remove my phone from me. She immediately did so and ran off with it. I was furious and chased after her, wanting to keep trying to get in touch with my dad. I begged, pleaded, but nothing worked. It was when Momma and Jamie walked in the door that I knew something was really bad. I flew down the stairs, demanding to know why Amber had my phone, because I couldn’t get in touch with Daddy.

They walked me to their room, sat me down on their bed, and explained that Daddy had been on his way back from Shelby and had suffered a heart attack. It took a minute to wrap my head around this, since he was only 36, but I managed a feeble “is he okay?” I guess an overwhelmingly large part of me really hoped that he was just hospitalized, but I still knew, knew that it wasn’t the case. My mom shook her head and broke down into tears, leaning forward to hug me. “No, baby. No, he’s not.”

It’s really hard to explain the emotion you feel at a moment like that. I guess there really isn’t a word for it – it’s more like a blankness sweeps over you, and you don’t really feel anything. I didn’t start crying until a few minutes later, when I insisted on picking up the phone and calling my best friend to try to explain what had happened, on my way upstairs to get dressed so I could go to my Memaw’s house. My mom had to take the phone away because I started crying so bad.

The following week was a crazy blur. I couldn’t sleep at night – my mom had to give me medication to help me do so. And since I was his only child, and he and his wife had been in the middle of a divorce, it fell to me to decide things for the funeral. What music should be played? What sort of flowers? He was being cremated, so what urn would you like to have used, Jessie?

I couldn’t be left alone. If I was by myself for more than five minutes at a time, I broke down into sobs. But if I was around people, I couldn’t cry. People were concerned for me, because they never saw me shed a tear. “She should be crying,” They said, “It’s bad for her if she keeps it boiled up inside.”

It was too hard to explain that I didn’t want to put my own agony off on other people. They were people Daddy loved, people he cared for. It was hard for other people to look at me – it still is – because I look so much like him. The same eyes, same hair color, same shape of face. They looked at me, and they saw him. To cry, to mourn him in front of them, it seemed like something I shouldn’t do. I should be strong for them, because he would have been.

I don’t really want to write any more about it, because I’m finishing this up in English class, and I’m about to start crying as it is. .__. I refuse to cry in front of my classmates. So I’ll just wrap it up by saying that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through – and am still going through.