My plan was to write every day, but with my busy life my goal was to put a post up at least once a week. With my schedule, that tends to be an ambitious goal. The fates seem to have a target on my back lately. With varying degrees of awfulness, imagine the past month of my life as a roller coaster. There’s that beginning dip, then there’s that huge drop, then even though that huge drop was the worst part, there’s still mini drops after that aren’t as bad, but are no help when you got sick after that first major drop. I used to love roller coasters, but as I have gotten older, I have inherited my mom’s motion sickness and they are no longer as enjoyable as they once were, so this is the best analogy I could come up with.

It started off as a cold my daughter Keilani caught. She was sick for a couple of days, but you couldn’t really tell, other than her runny nose and cough. She was still a ball of energy. She passed the germs to my daughter Isabella, who was worse. After a doctor visit, it was determined she had an ear infection, and given antibiotics. I was next in line for the germs. I was lucky enough to get a sinus infection, a migraine, and food poisoning all in one day. The pain did not stop for almost a week. I also had to try to stay away from my husband, Javier, as he had surgery planned for the following week and could not afford to get sick.

I do not know if anyone believes in premonitions, but I had one on Sunday, August 27. I called my dad and he was out at a bar celebrating his wife, Liz’s birthday. The conversation was mostly normal, but a few parts of the conversation stood out to me for some reason and I just felt weird. I brushed it off, because in my world, nothing bad is going to happen. I honestly should know better by now, because usually when I get that feeling, I am right. I have had it several times this month, alone, but since it’s usually only for bad things that I feel it strongest, I guess my optimistic nature tries to suppress it.

On Monday, August 28, 5 minutes after Javier went in for his surgery, I got a call from my aunt that my dad had collapsed the night before from a cardiac arrest and was in the ICU. I was alone in my car dealing with this news. My husband is literally in surgery. I have friends, good friends, but basically no support system in Florida. My whole family lives in California. After my husband was in recovery, just a very long hour later, we got permission from his doctor to fly the next day. My wonderful mom helped me get a flight out, where we were worried we would get stuck because Hurricane Idalia was rapidly making its way straight for us. I was able to get my recovering husband who had no usable arms, my 2-year-old, and my 3-year-old on a flight to California in just over 24 hours. Just for the record, some people are amazing and will offer to help when they see you struggling and some people will just watch you struggle with 2 toddlers, a double stroller, 2 car seats, a backpack, and a husband with 2 slings on his arms.

Also, we had to ask, and for anyone that doesn’t know, the difference between a cardiac arrest and a heart attack, because there is one, is that a heart attack does damage to the heart and a cardiac arrest the heart literally just stops.

We spent that week going back and forth to the hospital, and we watched small signs that my dad was healing. But with every drive to the hospital, I would wonder if that last conversation was the last one I would ever have with my dad, and I would think of all the things we hadn’t discussed yet, all the plans we had made for someday.

My dad’s house is in the country. The nearest hospital is 30 minutes away. He had CPR for far too long before he made it to the hospital. His body was healing, but the important information was what would be revealed on an MRI for his brain. Hope always lives with me, but somewhere deep down, I knew. There was too much brain damage. Based on what my dad would have wanted, the decision was made to take my dad off of life support. My dad died in the early hours of September 2 surrounded by his family.

Those dips I mentioned that don’t really matter in the roller coaster? My grades suffered. My computer died and I had to get a new one. Other health problems might be popping up in my family. My kids have decided to not listen to me at all, lately, probably due to my mood, they can sense it. Our AC isn’t working right. Someone scratched our car at the airport. Little annoying things. The computer is probably the biggest one because it’s financially impactful. Another premonition. My dad will be having a military funeral and because the cemetery is so busy, the original date was fully booked and so the only date available is my birthday. Which I so knew was going to happen. I could feel it, even before they confirmed that.

It has been 17 days. I still do not know how to function. I have lost a lot of people in my life, of all ages, since I was 3 years old. I know the grief process. But longevity runs in my family and people do not usually pass in my family without a long illness or old age. It never comes quickly and unexpectedly like this. I never got to say goodbye and I never expected this to happen for another 20 years. I do not know how to live in a world where my dad does not exist. Google says grief, like how I am feeling now, usually lasts around 6 months. My great aunt, in her 90s, says she had to go to therapy when her dad died. I am probably heading that way, as the only motivation I have to get up in the morning is my beautiful daughters.

I am forcing myself to function everyday. I am going through the motions of a healthy person. I am thankful to my husband’s surgery because it means I do not have to go to work since I still have to take care of him. I am trying to get through my schoolwork, which is hard, because whenever I needed help, my first resource was my dad. When I scroll mindlessly through Facebook, I have to remember I can’t share that funny meme with my dad. When my girls do something funny, I send the video to my mom, but I can’t send it to my dad. I cry when I think of things we talked about doing that we will never do. Or when I see things that we did in the past that remind me of him.

I know this feeling is going to last for a long time, and it’s still very early in the grieving process. I know that this feeling will never truly go away. I am 34 now. I know that when I am 80 (hopefully, my dad was only 73), one day I will look at old photos or videos or remember a conversation and the grief will feel fresh.

I hope my daughters will have some memories of him. My great aunt died when I was 3 and I have exactly 2 memories of her. I have no videos of my dad with my girls, just pictures. He was so excited to see them, and I hate that we were 3000 miles apart.

My dad was a LCDR in the Coast Guard Reserve and a Staff SGT in the Army Reserve. Don’t ask me what he was in the California National Guard, because after he kept retiring and then unretiring from jobs, I couldn’t keep track. He was an administrator for the Sacramento Mental Health Treatment Center. I only remember that because it was his voicemail for years. He was in the City of Sacramento Pipe Band. He was born in Japan as an Air Force brat, though the American military base no longer exists, and it is now a Japanese military base. He lived in France for a while. I have poems he wrote there as a kid somewhere. I hope I can find those. My first 2 international trips included my dad–Canada and Scotland. He introduced me to some of my favorite movies and TV shows–Star Wars and Outlander. He taught me to love band; I played flute and some trumpet and he played trumpet (and guitar and bagpipes and bass drum). He taught me to love reading, and to read anywhere and everywhere, and quickly. He taught me to think critically through all my homework assignments.

I am sad he will not see me get my master’s. He will not see my girls grow up. I am glad he got to see them at all. I am happy he was at my wedding and he knows who I will be spending my life with. I will miss him so much. Dad, I love you more than you know.

Thank you for reading this far. I appreciate you.