Anticipatory grief…I think this is the end.

My mother called me at 9am this morning to tell me the news. My Q father was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, had a heart attack, and is now on a ventilator and deemed unresponsive.

I’m feeling lost and helpless and don’t know what to do. We are waiting on brain scan results to come back later this afternoon.

My father was an alcoholic for my entire life (25 years). He suffered major social anxiety and depression and it affected how he showed up for me in all of my life stages. He didn’t come to any of my softball games, cheer, or band competitions growing up. No award shows or talent shows. No drill team showcases. He wasn’t even at my wedding. I remember in high school joining the bass fishing team just to foster some sort of connection with him and appeal to his interests. If it didn’t have anything to do with fishing or hunting, he didn’t want much of it.

When he would bring me home from school sometimes we would always stop at the gas station. He’d get his 24 pack keystone light, and I’d get my bug juice. As soon as we got on the backroad to the house he would pull over and grab a beer out of the back and crack it open. Looking back now, I didn’t know this was a bad thing at my young age and that he could’ve been pulled over for drinking and driving any one of those many days.

When I was in my freshman year of college, my parents divorced. I was proud of my mother for finally doing it. I know it must’ve been hard to leave someone you love so much but they’ve turned into someone you don’t know anymore. After my parents divorced and my mom kicked my dad out of the house, I didn’t see him or talk to him much anymore. He moved in with his mother 2 hours away so I would see him when I went to visit them and we would go out and fish on the lake. After he moved out of his mom’s house, he moved to a RV park and I never saw him or talked to him since. I think it’s been about a year.

My father has been to rehab multiple times. I’ve seen him so skinny that I hardly recognized him. I’ve seen him lying in a hospital bed with bruises the size of baseballs all over his body and skin as yellow as a hilighter. His longest sober stint that I’m aware of was about 2 years. My brother went down to see him a couple months ago and said he stayed up all night drinking and blaring music.

I don’t hate my father. I know he loves me, and I love him a lot. There have been many calls from my mom with her saying “your nana called. Your dad is in the hospital again.” and I’ve thought “well, this is the one”, and it never was. I’m not so sure he’ll make it out of this one. He already has high BP, and has been in chronic liver failure for the last year and a half. Today I’ve been thinking of him in the garage making his own bullets or working on his truck blaring George Strait or Red Hot Chili Peppers and singing along. Or us riding the 3 wheeler around the block at night with bugs flying in our faces.

He isn’t a perfect dad, but he is my dad and I sure as hell will miss him.