Losing my dad was the hardest event to go through in my life. It was a horrible time emotionally for me. I had just started middle school, and I was trying to adjust to the leap from elementary school. I was in school for about a week, trying to make new friends and become situated with my new surroundings. That was tough enough, just becoming comfortable in middle school. I was stressed from that whole process, but not nearly as emotionally distraught from the news my mom told me one morning. My dad had to be rushed to the hospital during the night and died.
The news hit me hard. I was totally numb; I couldn’t believe what my mom had told me. My whole world was destroyed. My dad meant a lot to me. He was the person I could joke around with. He would play games with me and be my friend. He treated me like I was older than I really was. He let me help him at his work. He was the world to me, and I really thought he was going to survive his illness. I had no doubt that he was going to get through it. He had been on chemotherapy to help with his disease, and survived through that. He and my mom said that he was going to be fine. I don’t know if they were just saying that to make life easier for me while I started middle school, but either way I would have been crushed.
I didn’t go to school for about a week; I needed to stay home and try to deal with my grief. I was either moping around the house or crying in my room. The funeral services were very hard on me. So many people I knew came to the viewing for my dad. Seeing all the people come made me happy, but in turn that made me even more sad that he died. He meant a great deal to many people, and that made me even more upset that he had to be taken from us.
Once all of that was over, I made my attempt to come back to school. Coming back was very hard and awkward. I am fairly sure all my teachers were notified and told the kids in all my classes. This made fitting in difficult because I’m sure most people were nice to me because they felt bad, and thus making new friends became really hard. I didn’t know if someone simply felt bad for me or really liked me. I had friends from elementary school, but most of them weren’t in my classes. I needed to make new friends. It was also hard to make friends because I don’t think I acted like myself. After my dad died, I think I became a lot quieter and conceited. Along with just being in a new place with new people, this made me very shy. In elementary school I was definitely a lot more outgoing, but all these events changed me.
Somehow I made it through the school year with some new friends that I’m still friends with today for the most part. I have trudged through all my school years since then. My personality is still trying to recover from those few weeks during my dad’s death. I think I’ve become more outgoing than I was since then, but I’m still shy. Not having my dad during those middle school and high school years was really hard. Those are the times I think it’s most important to have your father. Without my dad, I struggled, but I made it through in one piece. I accepted his death fairly quickly when it first happened, but I still think about him from time to time. I think about how my life would be different and how I might be different. There is nothing that can be done about it now, so all I can do it try to be the best person I can be every day. I’m still working on trying to be open, but it can be hard sometimes. Losing my dad was the most difficult thing in my life. It has and is still affecting my life, even though it happened six years ago. I hope that eventually I will become more like I was in elementary school, friendly and outgoing, but it is something that will take a few more years.
