Why I hate February 2nd

It was the first week of January. I was fifteen and a half years old. Which seems silly to write about being a half a year old when you're a teen, but that's how old I was.

At any rate, that morning I was due to return to school, but something was horribly wrong in the world.

My mom was worried about my dad, and was waiting for the ambulance to come and take him away. He had awakened that morning and told her that he couldn't see.

The paramedics came and whisked him away. I dressed and headed off to school. But there was no way that I was going to be able to focus at all on schoolwork.

I traveled to the hospital after school, which was two train stations away on the Lexington Avenue line and reconnected with my mom. Dad was in the intensive care unit hooked up to a ventilator.

Now, my dad was a heavy smoker and a somewhat heavy drinker. I wouldn't call him an alcoholic, but he definitely was addicted to cigarettes—although he did try to cut back some after he suffered from a collapsed lung a couple of years prior.

Dad had other health issues, too, though. Blood pressure. Blood sugar. Arthritis. He was 61 at the time; hardly a spring chicken. Or even a summer chicken at that point.

In the hospital he stayed, though. That evening, I went home. He was asleep while I was there, and was that way most of the time I visited. I made it a point to visit afterschool and on weekends for the first four weeks or so that he was in the hospital. I was already struggling during my time in school. (I was highly unmotivated anyway as a sophomore; going through this did not help at all.)

On February 1, because I wasn't sleeping well, I was too tired to go visit. "I'll go tomorrow. He won't miss me not being there."

A little bit after midnight, the morning of February 2, the phone rang. Dad had passed away.

I admit that the cause of death eludes me at this time; it was an infection of some kind, but I am not sure as to the source. I read the reports about a year after he died, but there were some long words there that I don't recall right now.

The biggest thing that has lingered with me, though, was just how fleeting the whole thing seemed.

No, not his stay in the hospital; that was interminable. It is for sure part of the reason I hate hospitals to this day.

It was more the fact that he was just...gone.

I never got a chance to say a proper goodbye.

I know, I know; he crashed long after visiting hours had ended. It might have been even more scarring to have been there while he passed away. No one wants nor should ever have to endure watching a parent pass away.

However, I felt guilty about not going to the hospital that day. I still do. I don't think that I hastened his death by not going, but I think my soul would be a bit more at ease if I had seen him on what was to be his last full day on earth.

And that's why, on Groundhog Day, there is always a cloud over me.

I think about it now because it's been 19 years. He's been gone over half of my life. Some years it hurts more than others, and that bothers me for some reason.

I hate that he never got to see me act in a play. He didn't get to see me graduate from high school or college or graduate school. He wasn't there to congratulate me on getting my first job. He couldn't help me learn how to drive or beam with pride when I (finally) passed my driving test.

He never got to meet my beautiful wife or his crazy, wild grandson.

Those are the things that hurt. When I think about those facts, it stings. Hard. It hits right to my core.

I should probably let the pain go at some point. But if it hasn't completely cleared by now, will it ever?

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