Well, it's official, today sucks. People have gone and pissed me off, once again. And do you know what I do when that happens? I hop into my make believe car and take a steady drive down the road of my past, revisiting all the good and the bad, mainly the bad.
One memory that was brought up the other day was the one of my dad, one I don't like thinking of much. If you know me well enough, my Jourdanton friends, then you know the whole story, but it not, well then here you go.
Last year, 2007, I spent the summer with my dad. ((straying from subject)) He and my mother had been divorced since I was in the 4th grade. Up untill 7th, he still lived in Canyon Lake but once the school year started, he packed up and left for Missouri, which is about a 12 hour drive from Texas. Well I had gotten to go visit him over the summer but while spending the whole summer with him got to the both of us and all we would do is fight. And even during the next summer, that's all we would do. Well, my dad and I had a joke going on since I was little that he was going to get cancer from smoking so much. Well, he did.
But suprisingly, it wasn't from smoking. It had been just 2 weeks after I came back to Texas that I got a call from my Aunt saying that my dad was in the hospital with a very aggressive cancer that was going to eat him alive in less than two months. Imagine my suprise when I hear that of the man who I had just spent two months fighting with, who was perfectly fine at the time? So, within one day, I was all packed up and on the way to see the man who had spawned and raised me. My brother, Stephan, had called and told me that he looked a lot different than he had before, and he was right, he did.
When I got to the hospital the next day, I got to see my father, Richard Lee Daves. He was laying in the hospital bed, asleep, weighing around 30 pounds less than he had when I had seen him last, pale and with a giant tumor protruding from the side of his neck. The cancer had managed to sneak up on him within 2 weeks and swallow his throat almost entirely. He had to stay on life support and couldn't breathe most of the time... The doctors said that he only had maybe a month to live, if he was lucky, two with treatment. Needless to say, it was terminal. I can still remember the look in his eyes when he woke up to find me there. He looked so... Relieved... As if I had done him a miracle by just appearing. Something else I will never forgot is the way he sounded when he talked... He wasn't like he had been before at all. His once strong and booming voice was quiet and hoarse...
My brothers showed up later that night to see me. They both looked so tired, so was I. You would be too if you were dealing with some of the people in my family. My uncle Robert, if I even dare call him family, was in a silent battle against my father to gain everything that he owned so that he could turn his back on his little brother and sell all of his worldy possesions as if they never ment a thing.
Now, I don't feel like telling the whole story because that would bring up too much but one important detail was that the day my father got to go home on hospice, it was time to celebrate the day of my birth. It was on Sept. 11 that I got to see my father for the very last time. I got a call 13 days later from my brother telling me that he had died, my brother Justin lying beside him...
But that's not even the worst part. I found out that during December, my Grandma, whom I love dearly, was dying as well... She died 6 days before Christmas.... Then, once the new year started, my aunt Jane passed away... I lost 3 people that I loved all in a matter of 6 months... I almost lost my brother, Stephan, on Christmas eve when he was rushed into the hospital. I can't recall what happened but had they waited one more hour for surgery, he would have died...
So other than the normal teenage issues that I've been dealing with, raging hormones, school, and boy issues that suck major ass, I've had other, more depressing, things to cope with...
And people wonder why I try to be as closed off as I can?
Not to mention the other forms of abuse I suffered while growing up, included being raped for multiple years starting at a very young age, impregnated, then thrown down the stairs when the person, who will remain unsaid due to personal reasons, found out... Maybe this is why I have trouble trusting guys, or really getting close to them...
So this has been a trip down Memory Lane... That will be $22.50...