workingwomanwrites

[workingwomanwrites]

I was being prepared for survival and I had no idea.

Anyone relatively close to me knows that the past year of my life has been a roller coaster to say the least. A lot has happened. Some of it has been wonderful and other stuff not so much. I left my ex-husband of 8 years, I moved twice, I got a life changing promotion, I met my current boyfriend, and then of course, we got pregnant while on the Mirena (supposedly the best birth control out there), among other things. 

I remember crying through each of these life occurrences (the negative ones at least) and wondering why it was all happening. I truly wondered why. I never decided one day that I was going to turn my life upside down. It all just happened, from choices that I needed to make and some that were out of my control, but it all happened. 

Here’s what was ACTUALLY happening, now that I am able to put these things into perspective.

God removed me from a toxic and abusive relationship. And I mean, I was completely removed. My ex took a violent turn towards the end where no matter what happened, my returning would never be justified. Then I met the man who I am with now, who has shown me true unconditional love for the FIRST time in my life (from a romantic relationship at least). I hate to compare, but truly, if I was with my ex when my dad passed, he would have made the entire situation about him, would not have been sympathetic to my pain, and honestly probably wouldn’t have even been present for the grieving or any of my dad’s services. Instead I had this person who was gentle while at the same time being my rock. Comforting me and my family, treating them as his own. No title will ever take that away. My ex had the husband title and you know what? It nearly cost me my life. In turn, I couldn’t care less what any one has to say about it and I am forever grateful for this divine intervention.

God moved me closer to my mom. I left my old place, with all the awful memories of my past life, and even stayed with my mom for a month (which unintentionally brought me even closer to my family), until we were officially ready to move into our own place. I now live 5 minutes from my mom and we have been able to create a loving home there for Eli and new baby. It has served as my refuge during this time of grief, and again, I am grateful for this divine intervention.

God prepared me at work. I was promoted last fall to Director of Operations at the beautiful company I work for, giving me the stability to be able to take the time away and be with my family when my dad passed, without worrying about what financial toll that time off would take on my family. Not to mention, my work family has been some of the most supportive people in my life. A few of them not only attended my dad’s funeral services, but also donated to his funeral fund, brought food to my family, sent gifts, and even came to visit just to listen to us cry. I couldn’t go through this without them. They are the true definition of “work family” & I am grateful for this divine intervention.

Aside from giving me Robert, God also gave me back my family. My sisters, parents, and I, the Morales family, have always been close, but when I got married at 19, I lost a part of that. My ex wasn’t fond of my family and I isolated myself from them often to avoid disagreements with him. Immediately after I left him, my bond with my sisters and parents grew immensely. I spoke to my dad more often and reconnected with him in a very positive way. My sisters and I hung out more and I was at my mom’s several times a week again. As a matter of fact, the night he attacked me, after my son and I had to sneak out of the window, I only had one thing on my mind- I need my family. I sped straight to my parent’s house, crying on the phone to my mom and was relieved when they rushed me in the house, locked the door, and made me feel safe for the first time in a long time. With my separation, I returned to my roots, and right in the nick of time too. Any longer and it would have been too late. I’m lucky that the man I’m with now values my family so much. I’ve never experienced this refreshing kind of love and I am grateful for this divine intervention.

Finally, God gave us our sweet baby. When I found out I was pregnant, I lost my mind. For about a month I felt like I was in a dream. I would cry and feel hopeless, and I’m sure that makes me sound awful but if you know me, you know why. I planned on never having another child again, which I partially attribute to my ex, but also to my career-first mentality. Not to mention, the fact that Robert and I had only just started dating last year. However, when Dad died, it became UTTERLY clear to me what God was doing. I looked to two things for immediate comfort: my always-chipper Elijah Alec and the baby growing in my tummy. My boys brought me joy when nothing else would, and they still do. Robert never left my side for a second, and when we did decide to have the talk about whether or not he would stick around, it wasn’t EVEN a discussion. “I’m never leaving you, Eli, or this baby”, he told me. When he proposed that we name the baby after my dad, my heart melted. My mom and I cried tears of joy and sadness; joy for the little Paul who will join us in September and sadness for my dad Paul who we just lost. I feel a love for this baby that I have only felt for Eli, and it’s beautiful. Eli is good at sharing anyway and is really excited for his baby brother. Paul James is the little blessing that will pull me and our entire family through this year of loss. I can now say that I am grateful for my failed Mirena and for this divine intervention.

I had lunch with a close friend of mine today. When I explained a few of these things to her, first we laughed because like she said, if it could go wrong for me this past year, it really did. Then she said that although some people might look at the past year of my life and pass judgement on me (obviously this was not the most conventional year), I was actually able to connect all of it back to God. I told her that if anything, this year has brought me closer than ever to God. All of a sudden, it all makes sense. I am now able to see all the ways God prepared not only me, but my entire family to survive my dad’s death. My dad was a different person the year before he died. He was happy, close to his family, he made amends with people he came across, and didn’t become angry with anyone or cause anyone harm. He must have been preparing himself too without knowing it. It’s true what they say. Everything happens for a reason.

[workingwomanwrites]

5 Things I Learned from my Dad’s Death

I had a few ideas about what my first blog post would be. I never thought it would be this, but none of the other ideas matter to me anymore. I have these drafts written for first posts; one about my divorce last year, about religion and faith, controversial posts about politics and female empowerment. None of those matter to me right now. I don’t know if they ever will again. I can’t promise you that in this essay I’ll make you laugh or that I'll even be relatively clever, but I’ll be real. I pulled myself together enough to put these words onto virtual paper for not only you all, but for me as well. Writing has been the only way that I have ever been able to work through things in my life, which coincidentally, I got from my dad. I hope that this essay is a way to work through his death as well. Here are the 5 things I have learned from my dad’s passing this week. *Disclaimer* I curse. 

1. “No person is the sum of their last days; they are the sum of their life lived.” -David Maltsberger

I didn’t reach out to Dr. Maltsberger after he sent me this message this week, but it hit home for my family and I. My mom and I cried deeply when we read that comment together. The story of how my dad died is one of unexpected despair and trauma. I hope that when I go, I go peacefully without a crowd. My dad did not. This will be hard to share, but I hope that selfishly, it lifts some of the grief and trauma that I bring into every day that I’ve lived since. I can’t stop seeing how it happened: I received a phone call from my mom, barely able to breathe she screamed, “Your dad’s heart stopped, they’re trying to bring him back, Victoria I don’t know”, and the line was disconnected. I ran out of the house, calling each of my sisters on the way to the hospital, sobbing on the way there because something didn’t feel right. I believe inside, I knew that was “the” phone call. I ran up to the hospital doors and didn’t go up right away. I was scared to go alone. None of my sisters were answering anymore, they were in their own panic on the way to the hospital. I called my friend Joe before heading up to the elevator. I told him I didn’t want to go, and I cried. He genuinely seemed to feel my pain and encouraged me to go be with my family. I rode the elevator up to the 2nd floor. When the doors opened, a family of random visitors looked at me with sorrow. They must have known, now that I think about it. I wondered, “Why are they looking at me like that?”. When I turned the corner, I realized why. My dad’s room had 6 or 7 staff outside of it, covering their mouths in horror. That’s when I heard my mom yelling my dad’s name over and over. I began to run to my dad’s room, and heard my sister Andrea yelling at my dad to wake up. When I entered the room, the shock fell over me. The crying was instantaneous. My dad had 20 to 30 doctors and nurses surrounding him, most of them in a panic, attempting to resuscitate. My mom and sister stood above him, begging for him to come back. I frantically pushed through the crowd and saw my dad, or I don’t know if it was him. It didn’t look like him. They pounded on his chest. There was no more life in his eyes. I don’t fully know what I said or did after that. I panicked and yelled and begged my dad to come back too, but he wouldn’t. I eventually slid down the wall, sat on the hospital floor, and cried and begged to God. I said to God, “not my dad, please don’t take my dad”, over and over until I couldn’t hear or say anything else. I ran through everything in my head- how could this happen? He was good, I just saw him today, how? Why? Every day since, I wake up crying because I see him like that; on the hospital bed, lifeless, getting his chest pounded, with so many strangers in the room, some of them laughing among themselves. It is an actual living nightmare. He never wanted to go like that. I keep thinking I’ll wake up at some point. When I read what Dr. Maltsberger wrote me about my dad’s life not being summed up by those last moments, for the first time since my dad’s death, I felt relief. I needed to be reminded of that. I need to remember that he was the dad who cooked for us, who joked with us, who loved us. He built this whole life in the 49 years before his last day. I can not base my memories of him on the last day. It just isn’t logical (but honestly, grief isn’t logical), and it isn’t healthy. I’ll drive myself crazy if I think about that last day forever. I pray and hope that when I die, I go peacefully.

2. Treat everyone kindly, because you never know what they’re going through or what they will go through.

What most people don’t know is that earlier in the day, I was at the hospital visiting my dad. I stayed for several hours and the nurses assigned to him were treating he and my mom horribly. My dad couldn’t hear, so when the nurse would come in she would roll her eyes and annoyingly raise her voice at him every time she had to repeat an instruction. At one point she asked my dad to lift his arm and he didn’t. She yelled, “You can’t pick up your arm or what?”. Y’all, I went in. I said, “First of all, my dad just had open heart surgery. Second of all, he can’t hear, and you know that. Third of all, you have an awful attitude and you need to treat my dad right or find someone who will”. My mom stayed silent. The nurse rolled her eyes and walked out. After a few more unfriendly run ins with her, she called security on me and had me escorted out of the hospital. She told the security guard that I was raising my voice at her. They actually wanted the whole family escorted out, at which point I DID raise my voice and said, “Absolutely not! I’ll leave, but I don’t trust you. Someone needs to be with him because I don’t know what you’re going to do to him!”. They allowed my mom and youngest sister Julia to stay after that, but I had to go. I can promise that I had not raised my voice at her until that point, despite her awful attitude. What it was is that this woman has a god-complex and is used to being able to treat patients however she feels like, without any repercussions. What she didn’t realize, is that her god-complex took my last hours with my dad away from me. Maybe I’m blinded by grief, but even if I try to look at the situation objectively, I can’t wrap my head around it. If she was having a bad day, she can’t let that affect her treatment of patients. It’s her job. I would never treat my clients that way, even now that my dad has died this week, I couldn’t bring myself to treat another human that way, much less one that just had surgery and is under your care. The way I see it, I had two choices: 1. Let her treat my dad like shit during what none of us knew was going to be the last day of his life, or 2. speak up, defend my parents, and hope that she stopped. I chose the latter and now, sitting here, I would still choose the latter. Let me be clear. I will always defend my family or friends when I feel like they are being treated poorly. It is something that possibly this baby is giving me; I’m opening up to this protective, nurturing side of me that I never knew I had, to be frank. I am grateful for it though. Now, every time I think about that last day, I think about how much rage I have towards that nurse. Monica. She was horrible and I just hope one day she is put in her place. I wish I could be the “bigger person” and give up the grudge, but I haven’t. I guess it is all part of the grief process, but who knows.

3. Unfortunately, finances are still everything.

This is a tough one, but it is reality. My sisters and I have had to truly pull together these past couple of days and make a miracle happen, and we still aren’t positive that it’s going to happen. It is expensive to die y’all. Before I walked into the funeral home on Monday, I vomited on a tree outside in Boerne, Texas. I was nauseous the whole morning because not only were we going to the funeral home to choose caskets, flowers, and services for my dead father, but because I knew it was going to cost way too much for us to be able to afford. My dad didn’t care much for finances. He didn’t focus on material needs or the importance of them and to a certain degree, I admire him for that. However, because he didn’t have an income or life insurance policy, not only have we had to deal with the emotional cost of his death but also the monetary cost, and it costs a lot. All together it is about $9,000, give or take. Given, this is if we don’t have food or any refreshments for anyone after the burial service, which we don’t plan to because of the money. So far we have reached about $5,000 in covering costs, but still have several thousand dollars in funeral costs to cover. It is just the way the world works I guess, capitalism and all that. I know one thing for damn sure: I won’t go another month without a life insurance policy. In the case that I might pass, I need my babies and my boyfriend and my family to be covered. It is hard enough grieving over someone, to add financial stress to that makes all this that much more unbearable. In addition, I will contribute to any fundraiser, GoFundMe, anything that I come across from here on out. Before my dad’s death, I remember feeling reservation about it. I actually thought, “Since I don’t know them that well, or at all, they’ll think I’m weird if I give money”. Victoria, really? We don’t care. All we care about is being able to pay for a proper burial for my dad. The other option is simply just not having one. That isn’t much of an option, is it? I vow to give freely from here on out. I will say that one of the most moving things is seeing the amount of people who have contributed. My mom, my sisters, and I cry a lot these days, but sometimes they are tears of relief from one more person giving monetary support. It makes all the emotional difference in the world to see that we’re that much closer to reaching our goal. Payment plans are not an option in the funeral business, at least that is what we’re told, and none of us have credit good enough to pull out a loan, otherwise we wouldn’t bother our friends and family with contributing. Here’s my take on it: no one owes our family anything, but when someone gives, it means everything.

4. Family is the most important thing. I don’t care what society tells us.

Here is an unpopular one. There is this meme going around social media right now that says something along the lines of, “No, you don’t have to try to be close to your family if they don’t try to be close to you”. I call bullshit. I can’t believe I am saying it too, because I have always advocated for “you choose your family”, etc. etc. The reason being that I was taught this by the church at a young age. I remember crying out loud and uncontrollably the night I got “saved” at church camp, and I told my youth pastor, “I don’t want my parents to go to hell”. I was assured that although this might be the truth, it’s okay because I was a part of God’s family now. When I struggled with my family relationships later in life, my pastor at the time told me that I was now “one with my husband”. He was my family now. If I offend anyone then I apologize, but this way of thinking is toxic. Now that my dad has died, the ONLY people I want to see or be around are my mom and my sisters. No amount of preaching or politics or friendships will ever cause a divide between my family and I again. Blood IS thicker than water. Sorry not sorry. I have mentioned before that my dad and I had a complicated relationship, this was in part because we both always thought we were right. In confidence, I can now say that I was wrong. I wish I wouldn’t have been so stubborn so that I could have enjoyed more time with my wonderful dad. Nothing will ever be more important to me than my family, because in the end, that truly is all we have. A couple of months ago, my dad and I reached a place of peace and happiness. I told him and my mom that I finally began to understand after my divorce last year, why they did everything they did. I was able to enjoy the last year of my dad’s life with him even more so than before, and make good, solemn memories together. I imagine though, that had I just let family be family, I would have had even more happy memories.

5. Everyone grieves differently.

Finally, the grief. The thing that makes your whole world stop and makes you feel like you’re watching your life as a movie, rather than actually taking part in it. My family and I have experienced some similarities, but none of it is pretty. None of it is Hollywood. None of it is good. It is all sadness felt deeply by each of us, filling the hole in our hearts where my dad used to be when he was alive. We hear his laugh in our heads, my sisters and I hear him call each of us by the nicknames he had for us, we see him smile and say something sarcastic, all of it to never actually be seen again. We fall to the floor in pain. We scream and cry. We lay in bed for hours. We clean for hours. We yell at people. I’m guilty of this mostly. I have grief rage. Moments after they stopped resuscitating, one nurse starting saying that my dad, “should’ve gotten the catheter like I told him too”. I looked up and thought I might actually go to prison for murder. A doctor looked at him sharply and said, “That is not the reason he died. He just had 5 stints put in his heart and he went into cardiac arrest”. The nurse looked down in embarrassment, but it wasn’t enough. I got up and looked him straight in the face. I yelled, “you need to leave now”. He replied, “I’m going”. I yelled even louder, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY DAD’S ROOM BEFORE YOU BLAME MORE FAMILY MEMBERS FOR HIS DEATH AND TRY BEING A HUMAN BEING”. The room got silent and the nurse left. I didn’t know how else to grieve at the time. It’s why I still think about the nurse Monica who was mean to my dad and took my last hours with him away. It’s why my mom called the hospital two days later screaming at the top of her lungs for answers. It’s just grief. Our human brains can’t fully process the loss of someone so important to our lives. We return to our child-like selves for comfort; crying, screaming, even hitting (not actual people, usually walls or steering wheels, although I wouldn’t put it past a person to hit a few people if they are grieving after feeling what I’ve felt over the past few days). It has been different for all of us. Sometimes we need to be away, in our own homes, focusing on our kids. Sometimes we need to be close to my parent’s home, crying and going over pictures and memories with each other. Sometimes we need to be in public, trying to hold it together around people who have no idea what is going on. We need to express our anger and our sadness and our despair. We just need to feel the grief.

The thing is, my dad didn’t want to die. I have heard older people and even younger people say they aren’t scared to die. This is something that has plagued me for as long as I can remember. I particularly struggled with this when I began college. I would think all day and night until I made myself sick, “Why are all of these people okay to die?”. My sisters and I weren’t raised that way. I don’t 100% know why, but my dad, my mom, my sisters and I have always been openly afraid to die. I believe that it stems from a very pure joy that we get from being together, alive. We have felt true happiness. We are and have always been okay with the simplicity of life. We could have nothing but a pot of beans and tortillas and we would join each other around the table, and laugh and joke and love each other over that meal, and it would be the best day of our lives. I wish I was kidding. We are very simple people. It’s possible that because we have felt pure joy when alive, we have all been afraid to death of death. Because my dad always hated the idea of death, the only thing right now that gives any of us any peace is thinking that he is still here. I imagine Dad’s spirit roaming around the house, his slippers sliding against the floor as he heads to the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge. He’ll shuffle back to the couch in time to watch the western movie he got into a few minutes back. He’s telling my mom that he’s okay and everything’s fine. He’s smiling and hugging our kids as they jump on the couch to be with him. It’s beautiful and it’s all I have left.