This is a paper that i wrote for creative mind, about a moment that changed my life. warning--sadness ahead.

When people speak about “moments” their lives, rarely do they mean it quantitatively; rather than a precise second, they are referring to a relatively short period of time that has become encapsulated in their memory. A “moment” that changed a person’s life might occur in a minute, a day, or a week. The ramifications of the event can be immediate and drastic; other times they are more gradual, revealing themselves over time. Whatever the case, a life-altering moment is usually a time of great upheaval, a time when the entire world is turned on its ear.
My world turned on its ear when I was fourteen years old, the day my father died of a heart attack. It was a pleasant Saturday in April, around noontime. A typical teen, I came home with my mother from an orthodontic appointment, went upstairs briefly to take off my coat, and then assumed my customary position in front of the computer. A few minutes later I heard a huge crash from above. I thought then that perhaps my dad had fallen in the shower, which would have been difficult, since his shower stall did not have a bathtub and he was a large man. Seconds later, though, my mother’s shrill scream cut through the house, and I raced upstairs to find her in the bedroom. My father had collapsed. He lay on the white tiles of the bathroom, his dark skin an unusual grayish tone. My mother, a nurse, would later tell me that it was his skin color that told her that it was too late. His eyes bulged open, and his breath was ragged, coming in spasmic wheezes. My mother screamed at me to call 911 and I did so, dialing the numbers like I’d been trained to do since childhood in case of an emergency. Strangely, at this panicked moment, I was actually reminded of all those times when I had wanted to call 911 and then hang up, just to see what would happen, even though I knew it was wrong. I had never dreamed that I would get my wish like this.
I don’t really remember dragging my dad into the bedroom. I remember my mother, the nurse, telling me the paramedics would need room to work on him. Somehow, between the two of us we managed to maneuver him next to the bed, despite the fact that he weighed well over two hundred pounds. My father continued to gasp spasmodically. (I later learned from the paramedics that his heart had entered an arrhythmic state, beating wildly for a few seconds, then almost stopping entirely). His eyes were open, but he was looking past me, not at me.
When the paramedics arrived they told my mother and I to stay in the hallway. My mom went into the kitchen to use the phone. I went outside, crying hysterically. I circled the house three or four times, praying to God that he would be ok. As is typical of anyone who is about to lose someone they love, I offered God everything I could think of, if he would only save my father. Then I went back inside and slumped in the hallway outside my parents’ bedroom. I wasn’t supposed to be there; they didn’t want me to watch them trying to resuscitate him. After a while they loaded him onto a stretcher and put him in the ambulance. They were still defibrillating him at that point. No one told us whether he was going to be alright, but a part of me assumed that since they were taking him to the hospital, they had not yet given up. Someone there would save him.
When we arrived at the hospital, we had trouble finding out where he was or what was going on. One of the police officers had failed to give the hospital my father’s name and address. Finally we were herded into a small waiting room and told someone would brief us in a moment. I should have known then, probably. I’m sure my mother did. I should have known when the doctor entered without a smile on his face. But there’s no way to accept something like that, when you want so desperately to believe that it can’t possibly be happening to you.
But happen it did, in the form of those dreaded words from the doctor’s mouth—“We did everything we could. I’m sorry.” I remember sitting there dumbfounded, while my sister flew into a hysterical rage, screaming that the doctor was a liar. My mother said nothing. As soon as the doctor had left she reached for the phone, saying she had to call my grandfather, my aunts, and let them know. I asked her if she wanted me to do it, for at this point I was strangely calm, but she said no, it was something she had to do. I don’t remember the exact words she used when she had my grandfather on the phone, but I remember hearing his cry of pain when he was told that his only son was gone.
While my mother was half-crying, half-talking, I got up and walked out. I needed to be away from then right then, for it to sink in even a little bit. I remember looking across the hall and seeing another family, wearing tense expressions. They looked at me with fear in their eyes because of what I represented—the very worst, come to pass.
Somehow I managed to wander all the way across the hospital to the gift shop, where I randomly bought candy, thinking somehow that my mom would be hungry. My mother was worried by the time I returned. Someone told me that I could see him now, if I wanted to. She guided me to a small room with the blinds drawn over the windows. My sister was just leaving, with a minister whom she had asked to perform the last rites. Even at that moment, this little gesture struck me as ironic, because my mother was always chiding him for being a lapsed Catholic. The nurse asked if I wanted her to go in with me, but I said no.
I think even to the point where I opened the door, I was half-hoping that there had been some terrible mistake, that he would be sitting up in bed, a little tired but none the worse for wear. I went in, and saw him lying there on a narrow hospital bed, covered to the shoulders with a white sheet, and even then it didn’t strike me that my father was well and truly gone. The thought that perhaps he was only sleeping, and they had forgotten to check, crossed my mind briefly. I didn’t stay long with him. I kissed him on the cheek, which was grizzled like always in the morning. I so rarely kissed him when he was alive; back then I was just a stupid teenager who wanted to pretend her parents didn’t exist. He was still warm when I touched him. I remember the pain in my mother’s eyes when I told her that later; she said she hadn’t kissed him goodbye because she thought he would be cold, and she didn’t want to remember him like that.
After the hospital, we went home. We all had calls to make. The first thing we did together, strangely, was to go into my parents’ bedroom and start going through his things, making piles of clothes to be donated and things to be saved. It was just something to do, at that point, some way to keep going. I remember my mom telling my sister and I repeatedly how much he loved us, as though it was a point that needed to be driven home quickly, before any of us forgot.
Our relationships with our dad were complicated, to say the least. There was a lot of fighting. I would only find out later how much stress and pressure my father was under, both from his job as a manager at a nuclear power plant, and his own personal expectations of what his life should have been, and wasn’t. He also had problems controlling his anger; sometimes, after a long day at work and the hour-and-a-half commute home, he would fly into a rage over a sock or hanger left on the floor. He was also a perfectionist, and he couldn’t understand it when my sister and I did poorly in something. My father, the math and science whiz, didn’t accept Cs in math. Even Bs were looked down upon; it was the As that mattered. My sister had more of a struggle with this than I did; three years older than I, she had never fared well in her math classes, and this was the subject of many a screaming match between the two of them.
A lot of my father’s behavior stemmed from the pressures his life put on him, combined with his health problems, but when I was fourteen I knew nothing about any of it. All I knew was that my dad could be a royal asshole a lot of the time, a paranoiac and a control freak. So many times I told him I hated him, or that I would never raise my children the way he raised us. I never tried to understand him. I couldn’t have, back then, at fourteen, when I barely had any idea who I really was, but I never even tried. Before he died, my dad told my mom that he considered himself a failure. He was worried about losing his job, and ashamed that he hadn’t become a vice president like he should have, on account of the fact that he had always refused to kiss up to anyone. This has always struck me as the greatest tragedy of his life, that he died believing this. It was so far from the truth.
The day after my father died I sat down and wrote. My mother wanted me to write something to put on the back of the little cards they give out at wakes. Rereading that now, it seems very juvenile, but at the time there was barely anyone who could read it without crying. Most people thought there was something wrong with me, back then, because I didn’t cry a lot. My friend Heather, who had actually never met my dad, cried more than I did at the wake. Seeing him there in the casket that I helped choose wasn’t really hard for me, since my mother had arranged for those of his organs which were still usable, despite his diabetes, to be transplanted. They took his eyes, his veins, his skin. He looked nothing like himself. The only point at which I cried was when his fellow Masons performed their version of last rites, lining up to each place a sprig of evergreen, a symbol of eternal life, in his coffin. One of them later told me that he had never seen a greater turnout of brothers at a Masonic wake. When they all wanted to tell me, as they went down the line, what a wonderful, intelligent, humorous man my father had been, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. These men got to know him, got to really talk to him, and I never did. I remembered his sense of humor, of course. He could be so hysterically funny, with his little skits and voices and sarcastic observations. But all my good memories must contend with all the bad feelings, all the resentment and anger. Fourteen is too young to know your parents.
I could write volumes about what happened after my dad died. I never went to therapy, though a lot of people suggested to my mother that I do so. I never liked the thought of psychiatrists, and I didn’t feel like I needed one, anyway. I had amazing friends who helped me keep going. My friend Sara was the only one who could really understand, having lost her father when she was eight. She knew what it was like to feel different from other families, to not be able to celebrate Father’s Day, to feel strangely apart from other kids our age.
My sister was not so lucky; not only did she not have very many friends at that point, she also suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. We rarely talk about him with each other. Jen and I didn’t get along while he was alive, even though he always warned us that when he and my mom were gone, we would only have each other. I talk about him with my mother, though. We’ve had many a long talk about my father’s life, about his mental and physical state when he died, about all the bad times as well as about the good. My mom has come to the conclusion that all really is for the best, and I agree with her. She pointed out that my father’s health was deteriorating, and he had lost his job, he just wouldn’t have been able to take that humiliation. I also know that if my father had lived, I would never have enjoyed the level of freedom that I did for the rest of high school. My mom is a nurse who works second shift; once my sister left for college, I was by myself much of the time. I learned to make my own choices and be truly independent. My dad would never have let me date while I was in high school, or be out late with friends. He required all plans to be finalized at least two days in advance, which is hardly the way my friends and I do things now. He never would have let me drive his precious Chevy Tahoe, which I do. If my father had lived I doubt our relationship would have improved; maybe ten or fifteen years down the line, when I was grown up and free of him, but there would have been many more bad memories in between.
My feelings about my dad’s death haven’t sorted themselves out yet, even now, three and a half years after his death. There will always be times when the grief wells up again, and the terrible sense of loss threatens to overwhelm me. It happened while I was writing this paper, even though I have revisited the events of April 15th, 2000 many a time, and it will probably continue for the rest of my life. It’s hard to know that my dad will never see me graduate college or be married, to know that to my children, Joseph DiMarzo will just be a ghostly recollection, lacking any real substance, just in the way my mother’s father is to me.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is the uncertainty, the part of me that desperately wants to know if I will ever see my father again. I was well on my way to not believing in Catholicism back at fourteen. I still believe in God, and I don’t harbor any anger against Him for what happened, but I have never been able to figure out what I believe in terms of heaven. The idea of reincarnation always appealed to me, but more in an aesthetic sense rather than a dogmatic one. I want to believe that I will see him again, and be able to explain and make up for all the things I said or didn’t say, but there are times when I doubt. Above all, I want to know if I will ever have the chance to tell him I love him, and that he wasn’t a failure, but the best father he could have been under the circumstances. I want to show him the people that Jen and I have become and tell him that it was his example that drove us to excel, his memory that kept us reaching for the top.
Just a few nights ago, on Halloween, my mother visited a medium. It was her birthday, and she wanted to do something fun. The first person the medium “saw” was a man who had respiratory problems (my father apparently had asthma) and who had died very suddenly. All this man, ostensibly my father, wanted my mom to know was the he was “safe”. I’m not sure how much I believe in psychics, and my mom doesn’t really either, but it was still somewhat of a comfort to hear that said.
In the three years since my father died, I have changed so much that sometimes I wonder if he would even recognize me. When he left I was a rather ungainly teen with self-esteem issues; now I’m an independent college student, and I know just what I’m capable of. I was a writer back then, of poetry and short stories, and I remember my father constantly encouraging me, telling me how talented I was. (Though a brilliant man, he could hardly spell; I always found that amusing). Though my poems today rarely touch upon him, I know that I have been profoundly shaped by his influence. How ironic that in so many ways, my father’s death taught me just as much as his life.