Sometimes Life Sucks

It’s true sometimes things happen in our lives that hurt us so much that we feel as if the sun will never shine again.

I felt like that as I watched my father die. I wanted to scream and holler as the world kept moving forward as if nothing happened. My father modeled a loving parental relationship in a way that would be envied by most. He treated me, my mother, my sisters, and my brother all like we were special. We felt invincible.

When his heart failed, and he needed a heart transplant we worried but because he was a superhero to us, we never thought the day would come when he would die. But it did. Here is the part that makes me smile. My father handled death as he would any other problem. He digested the facts. Then he made his peace with God. He talked to each of us and told us that we would be okay and he even cracked a few dad jokes during his last weeks alive. He had lived an additional 20 years because of this new heart. We sat vigil beside his hospital bed counting the space between breaths. As they lessened, we knew the dreaded moment approached but he kept breathing. The night passed and he was still breathing so we left to take quick showers. One sister stayed as the nurse came to check on him. Right after we left the nurse noticed that he had already passed on. We were mad that we missed the moment. But in his Dad way, he spared us that pain and slipped away in his sleep. See, that is the testament of his life. He loved out loud in every way. And so should we. Today, I look back on those moments and I learned that bad events don’t make a bad life.

We control more than we admit or maybe I should say more than we allow ourselves to control. Give yourself the freedom to be happy and sad, to have good days and bad ones, and never forget:

• The community that held you up when you couldn’t stand on your own.
• The love that got you here and will keep you going.
• The faith that helps you put one foot in front of the other even when you just don’t know.
• The dreams that you haven’t had the chance to fulfill.
• The hope that another day brings.

It’s true sometimes life sucks but it’s better to have lived and lost than to have never lived at all.