Roommates 🫶

7

November 2010

Dad was in the hospital for a long time.

When we first came in to see him, I heard the doctors say something about a car crash with a drunk driver. The other driver was killed almost instantly, but Dad still hung on.

He had numerous surgeries and was on a lot of medicine. He had a bunch of monitors and wires hooked up to him. In just a couple weeks, he'd gotten so much skinnier and his skin was so pale. I almost didn't recognize him.

Mom and I went to visit twice everyday. Once in the morning and once in the evening. In between our visits we'd go do something together to get away from the depressing hospital. Sometimes we'd get lunch, see a movie, or go to the mall. Other times, when Mommy didn't feel good, we just went home.

After Dad was finished with his surgeries, he was left alone to wake up on his own. The doctors said it would take anywhere from a couple hours to a day. We held hope the first 24 hours after his last surgery, but he never woke up.

Once a couple days passed and he still hadn't woken up, he was moved to another area in the hospital. I asked Mom why they were moving him and she explained to me that he was in a coma. She told me a coma was when a person slept for a very long time but they were still alive.

Mommy also explained to me what death was. She told me that it was when somebody went to sleep forever and their soul went to heaven. I asked her if you could ever see them again after they died, and she said no. Then, she told me that Dad might go to heaven.

I didn't quite understand death. How could someone go somewhere else and never come back? What happened to their body? It just didn't make sense. Mommy told me that everyone will die one day, but I can't imagine myself dying, I will always be here, wouldn't I?

While we visited Dad, we'd usually talk to him, tell him stories, sing songs together, to try to lift the mood around him. The doctors said if we continued to talk to him, he might wake up faster.

Sometimes Mommy was silent. There were days when she wouldn't talk at all. Her eyes would be blank and she'd just stare off into nothing. Even when I tried to talk, she never said anything. She was like Daddy, but she was able to move around. I didn't like when she got like this. It feels like I lost two parents.

After she got like that, the next day she'd apologize profusely to me and shower me with affection. It felt nice to get her back, but I knew she'd get like that again eventually. I also grew to be the talker out of the two of us. If we ever went anywhere I always did the talking. She was always quiet to others besides me and Daddy's doctors.

As for school, they excused me for a month after they heard what happened. They made weekly homework packets for me to complete and every Monday we'd go to pick them up and turn the previous one in.

I didn't see any of my friends for a while. Frankly, I didn't want to. They were always so happy and so upbeat, and I was the complete opposite of that. The only thing I had on my mind lately was to take care of Mom and pray for Daddy to wake up.

That was how I lived for a month. Wake up, go to see Dad, break, go see Dad again, go home, sleep, repeat. All day, everyday. It was horrible. And I was so frustrated. Why did this have to happen to him? Things would still be good and normal if the person didn't hit Dad. It's all their fault.

I grew to hate the person that did this to Daddy, and I was glad that they died. They paid the price of ruining my life with theirs.

Unfortunately this had to come to an end. After a month, I had to go back to school and Mommy had to go back to work. We couldn't sit with Dad all day anymore. We had to try to live normally without him there.