Things Unsaid

Part of me knew that my dad was going to die for a while. It was something that I never admitted to myself, but subconsciously I had a bad feeling. I don’t think you really want to acknowledge that someone is going to die. I mourned for my dad even before he died, for I knew that there was no coming back from ALS.  I would lay in bed at night thinking of a life without him. It was always a thought that I would try not to think about, yet as the hours grew later into the night, so did my thoughts. For a while, I thought that I had caused his death: that my worries and my dark thoughts took his life. 

Death was a conversation no one ever wanted to have. 

It was a thought I kept to myself, but one that I later learned was had by everyone in my family. You try to suppress something for so long that it ends up hurting more. There was an unspoken acknowledgment that things were not going to get better. As the days grew, and the trees changed colors my dad lost his abilities. At dinner my mom would silently excuse me to leave the table; I couldn’t bear to watch my dad struggle to eat the food in front of him. He was about to get a feeding tube. I would lay in bed and cry. I would wish we could go back to Greece and eat stracciatella ice cream again, tan, and live with salty hair and no worries. 

But it was not spoken about. 

I didn’t want to embarrass my dad; for he was strong and fighting with all the energy left in his body. I didn’t tell people for a while that my dad was sick. It was always explained as a sort of a stiffness, or a mobility issue. Never ALS. I remember spring of freshman year, my mom and dad were going away to do special treatments for his illness. It was the first time I told anyone that he had ALS.The first time the school got involved and I had to meet with the therapist to discuss my family situation. 

“Stella, how is it at home? 

“Impossible” I wanted to say. I just answered with “Yes it's hard to watch someone’s body shut down on them.” 

At the time, it felt that it would have been better to have said nothing. 

Now the things unsaid are the things that I wished I would have told my dad. 

I will have a choice  to acknowledge or not acknowledge his absence.

Anticipating the future, I believe I will choose to acknowledge him, acknowledge his loss, and the impact that he had on my life. It’s not easy to do that, but it’s better than leaving things unsaid.