A few days later I picked up my son from my mother’s house after a long day at work. He was giving me a little trouble as most three-year-olds do when testing their boundaries. When I finally arrived home, my husband spoke to our son over the phone and told him to go to his room and to wait for him to get home. I was very tired and having a hard time carrying the baby, whose weight was estimated at over 9 pounds and I still had four weeks to go.

My son went to his room, and I was busy browning meat for tacos and preparing the toppings when the phone rang. I was expecting it to be my mother, but it was the voice of my father’s ex-wife. She asked if I was alone and I said yes, her next words will forever be embedded in my memory, “Your father is dead.” Just like that, she blurted it out. I thought she was playing a terrible joke. I asked her what she was talking about and she told me he had collapsed in his truck and died of a massive coronary. I fell to my knees as my entire world stopped revolving. I was in total shock. Everything I knew was no more. I managed to call my mom, who lived only five minutes away, and she and my step-father came over.

The next year was one of the worst seasons I’ve gone through. In an attempt to protect my unborn child, I lived in denial until his birth four weeks later. I suffered from post-partum depression for a month or so, before returning to denial. Since Daddy lived two hours away, it was easy tricking my mind into believing he really wasn’t gone. He was just too busy in Alabama to visit. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone to call him, only to have reality slap me in the face. I couldn’t bear to look at any pictures of him without bursting into tears.

I finally went to a Christian counselor and worked through some of the emotions I had been keeping deep inside. I always said if anything ever happened to Daddy, it would be the end of me. It wasn’t the end, but there is a piece of my heart that will forever be scarred. The counselor told me there would eventually come a day when I would look forward to Jesus being the first person I saw when I got to Heaven, instead of my father. I’m happy to say after many years, that is finally true. Although, I often cry for the emptiness caused by missing him, and long to have him hold me just once more. Thinking back, when I came face to face with him in his coffin, I knew then a hero had fallen. God got a new angel that day, but I lost a hero.

My second hero is not your typical hero, either. He’s my step-father, whom I called Dad. When he and my mom married, he was young and still finding his way in the world, as was she. Mom and I had been on our own for two years and had more of a friendship than a mother-daughter relationship. We did everything together and had no secrets from one another.

My relationship with Dad was slow to start. The baggage of the divorce was like a new family member. I hated every time he made my mother cry and didn’t want him to try to replace my father. Now the hurting my mother was typical marriage stuff, but in the eyes of a child who is unaware of the inner workings of a successful marriage, a resentment developed. Being young, he made mistakes navigating the role of an instant husband and father.

At fifty-five, he became ill and endured months of tests and declining physical health. Some of the medications he had been taking were causing his liver to fail, and he needed a liver transplant now to save his life. Due to his age, the doctors were optimistic that the operation would be a success. In the meantime, it was extremely difficult to watch the devastation the illness was having on his body. His blond hair turned grey, he became very thin, with pale, yellow skin. His once-bright blue eyes were almost colorless, sunken, and surrounded by deep dark circles. His stomach would become painfully bloated, and he had periods of disorientation. He tried to put up a brave front. The time came when we were told that he wouldn’t last more than a week if he didn’t get the transplant.

He had been out of work due to his illness, so we held fundraisers to raise money to help cover the ever-increasing medical bills. Finally, we received the call, and he was off to the hospital. I didn’t get to see him before he had the surgery, and I will always regret that. He never recovered from the operation.  For the next five months, he fought for his life, battling one infection after another in ICU. We watched what little was left of him fade away. Mom and I rotated every other day making the forty-five-minute drive to the hospital to sit with him.

Each time, I drew a deep breath before opening the door to his room. I never knew what was waiting on the other side. The doctors and nurses would come in and out, stopping briefly on the other side of the glass, whispering to one another. At times I wanted to say, “Do you not see me sitting here? Do you not think I know how bad he looks? Do you really have to stop and discuss it there, in front of me?” I never did, of course. Instead, I read to him, I watched TV with him; I stood by his bed staring into his eyes for some sign of recognition, but never got one. Sometimes I told myself he saw me and knew who I was, but mostly I just saw these pleading eyes looking at me, with emptiness behind them. I tortured myself with questions of how much he was aware of what was going on. What if after I left he had one moment where he was aware and I missed it? What if there was one moment when he could tell me what he wanted, and I wasn’t there? What if he just felt comforted by me being there, and I just left? Each time I left there I felt like I was abandoning him.

Day after day it was the same. Sometimes he would turn to the sound of my voice. Other times he wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence. He was quiet and stared at the ceiling as if he were looking at something. I often asked him if his Guardian Angel was there. I can’t explain it, but I knew we weren’t alone.

The day finally arrived when we needed to make a decision. It was clear that holding on to him would have only been for our benefit. That would have been the most selfish act someone could do. Before I could give my input, I spent a while alone with him. I begged him, and God, to show me a sign of recognition or that somewhere inside that frail body, he was still there. Still, nothing, which was my answer. He was already gone. I knew that no matter what our decision was when it was Dad’s time to go, God would take him home, life support, or not. The same way that if it wasn’t his time to go, God would keep him here, life support or not.