The Day Everything Changed
Life was, you know, normal. Or what I thought was normal. My old man, he wasn’t perfect, nobody is, but he was there. Always. Until he wasn’t.
It’s funny how you take things for granted. The small stuff. His bad jokes, the way he’d hum off-key, even him hogging the remote. Now, silence. Just a big, empty space where all that used to be.
The Call I’ll Never Forget
Then came that phone call. The one that just rips your world apart, you know? Some damn suit on the other end, talking in circles, trying to sound all professional while delivering news that felt like a lead pipe to the gut. He said there was an “incident.” An “unfortunate event.”
Unfortunate? My father was gone. And it wasn’t just “unfortunate.” It was because of him. That son of a bitch who cut corners, who didn’t give a damn, who valued a few bucks more than a human life. He probably slept like a baby that night. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since.
My So-Called “Practice” of Getting Through It
So what did I do? What was my “practice,” my daily routine? Let me tell you.
- My practice was screaming into a pillow until my voice gave out, because screaming at the world didn’t change a thing.
- My practice was endless nights staring at the ceiling, replaying every memory, every “what if.”
- My practice was digging. Trying to find out exactly what happened, who was truly to blame. I wanted names. I wanted answers, not excuses.
I made calls. So many damn calls. Got hung up on more times than I can count. Got told “we can’t discuss this” or “no comment.” Yeah, real helpful. I read reports, pages and pages of corporate jargon that tried to hide the simple, ugly truth: someone messed up. Big time. And my father paid the price.
I even talked to lawyers. They used big words, too. Talked about “negligence” and “potential settlements.” I just wanted someone to stand up and say, “We screwed up. We’re sorry. This person is responsible.” But that’s not how it works, is it?
It felt like banging my head against a brick wall, over and over. Every day was a struggle just to get out of bed. Food tasted like cardboard. The whole world just seemed gray.
Where I Am Now, If You Can Call It “Now”
And now? Well, some time has passed. The raw, tearing pain isn’t as sharp, maybe. It’s more like a dull ache that’s just… always there. A constant companion. I still see that man’s face in my nightmares sometimes – the one I hold responsible, the one who took my father from me.
I try to live my life. I really do. For him, maybe. For myself, I guess. I try to find some peace, some way to move forward. But that phrase, that angry, helpless scream inside my head, “I want my father back, you son of a…”, it still echoes. It’s not just pure anger anymore. It’s mixed with this deep, profound sadness. A hole in my life that can never, ever be filled.
This whole experience, this “practice” in grief and fighting for something that felt impossible, it changed me. I don’t know if it made me stronger. Maybe just more cynical, more wary of people in suits making promises. But I keep going. Because what else is there to do? You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when you don’t want to.
