Picking Up My Pen After The Death Of My Dad

You may have noticed I have not been writing or sharing much these past few weeks. The reason is , well, let me put it this way, something tragic and unexpected happened  in our family.

I was palming to take all of Christmas vacation off from writing and then getting back to it after school started up again. Sometimes life just doesn’t go the way we want it to. Our family spent most of our days going to and from the hospital as my dad had gotten admitted on December 15th, a week before Christmas, we spent day in and day out there visiting him.

Doctors said he had a mild heart attack and that he would need open heart surgery. We were all good with doing that. The surgery was scheduled for the day after Christmas. We all spent Christmas Day together in my uncle’s hospital room.

Little did we know, things were going to slowly take a turn for the worst.

On surgery day, I woke up with my heart pounding out of my chest and so much anxiety. This type of surgery was very scary, and the unknown was very fighting for all of us. They let my mom and I go to pre op with him. About 25 mins later, they wheeled him into the OR.

The surgery took about 4 hours total, let me say it was the longest agonizing 4 hours of my life. The surgeon came out at about 2:00 that afternoon to say everything went great and there were no complications, our whole family was thrilled .

However though, our joy wouldn’t last long.

After about a week of monitoring in the ICU the nurses moved him back to the CVU unit because he was doing great! We all left feeling hopeful that he was going to be able to come home that Sunday.

That night though, we had all just shut the lights off to go to bed when my mom received a call from a PA in the ICU unit. It was 130- he said we all need to come down because my dad was struggling with his breathing. My mom was crying upstairs. My aunt went up to calm her down.

After about 10 mins, they both came running downstairs and told me and my other aunt that we need to leave the house and go to the hospital. We literally ran out of the house with nothing packed, all we had just our clothes on.

When we got to the hospital, my dad’s brother and his wife were there already. We all walked in through the ER.

We got up to the 8th floor and sat outside the ICU crying We awaited patiently for someone to come and talk to us. My heart was in paun and hurting, my anxiety was through the roof.

After about an hour of sitting an agnoy, a doctor and PA finally came out to talk to us.

The doctor talked first. She said she was afraid my dad would die that same night because his kidney’s were in failure. When I heard the word failure, I knew something bad and horrible was eventully going, to go down, but I didn’t epect it to go down as fast as it did.

As hard as it was for me to say, I held on tight to my mom and told the doctor, “I do not want to see my father suffer.” My heart  shattered into a million pieces just saying that.

On December 31, my aunts and I were gonna go home that night and let my mom stay the night. Then we rethought it and decided  to stay with her if god forbid something happened.

That night, I was up for most of the night- well, at least until my aunt shut the TV off. I don’t know why  but I knew something was up because the nurses weren’t come in to tell us anything, if there was a miracle, they would have ran in and woke us up, but they didn’t.

At about 430 the next morning the nurse came in. I could tell just by her tone of voice that it wasn’t good. My aunt told me to go back to sleep but I was too anxious. So I just got up. And listened to what the nurse was saying.

It wasn’t good news at all, so when she left we all cried.

An hour later I called my uncle and said for him to come down quick because dad was going to pass away any minute. He came. I didn’t go in at first, when it was time to call the priest, I went into the room with the whole family.

As the priest was giving my dad his last rights and final prayer, he passed.

We all left the room bawling like babies.

Never in a million years did I think I would have to  pronounce his passing on Facebook……ever.

The day he passed I was so heartbroken that I lost my will to write or do anything related to writing. I took off.

14 days after my dad’s unexpected and tragic death, I’m slowly picking up my pen and getting back into writing.

Hold onto your loved ones tightly, you never know when there last day on this earth will be. Tomorrow is never promised. Live everyday like it’s your last.

Juliana Ruggiero

Juliana is 18 and fresh out of High school. She graduated with High honors. Writing is something she really enjoys doing and everyone that knows her tells her she has a gift for it. Juliana is a hopeless Italian food addict, loves meeting new people and making new friends. She is very laid back and easy going. Juliana is here to inspire everyone and give it her all. She doesn't have a bad bone in her body. Her career began in July of 2016 after reaching out and offering to be interviewed for The Abler Blog. Since that interview, after seeing all the positive feedback she was getting from everyone, it pushed her to do more with her writing! Pushing herself to do more has lead Juliana to some of the most kind and supportive people she could ask for! She is grateful that she took that "leap of faith."

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