How I Handled My Father's Violent Death

Heads up this is a long one! Death of a loved one is not something to be done quickly. 

My father's death was one of the most traumatic events of my life.

My father was going downhill from months. His Type 1 diabetes was getting out of control and the herniated discs in his neck and back were making it extremely painful for him to walk and get around. Every Friday I’d get the car and drive from PA to MD to take him grocery shopping. It was a long process taking most of the day. My father had become a hoarder since our separation and his house was extremely dangerous for the blind man, half the time he would crawl around to find his way. 

I was in the process of working with social services, a decision that was extremely hard for me to do to my father who embraced his independence, to get him help. Something I wish would have happened sooner. The neighbors and I had a routine of calling him in the mornings and at night. With his Diabetes out of control, the paramedics were being called at his house almost weekly. The night before his death the neighbors and I had failed to get in contact with him. The paramedics were called one last time. The scene they found looked like something out of a horror movie. There was blood everywhere, walls destroyed and my father passed out barely alive on the floor in his bedroom.

It took me till the next day to be able to come and see the house for myself. The scene made my mind come up with all kinds of scenarios of what my father did to himself. Between me and the police, we discovered that he had locked himself in the bathroom and started to have a diabetic reaction. Trying to break through the walls and the door, my disabled and frail father silently collapsed and went into a coma upon his escape from the bathroom. The Drs informed me that his diagnosis was bleak. His left leg had stopped receiving blood flow and was becoming narcotic. His only chance was to have the leg removed at the hip joint which would leave my father in a wheelchair and take away his love of living alone. The problem was his dying limb was poisoning him so badly he wouldn't have been able to survive the surgery. Upon being asked by the Drs I told them not to do a DNR. My father died at 11pm that night. 

This event left a torn feeling within me. I was in a state of limbo, feeling destroyed for losing a man I loved (no matter what he put me through) and relieved that both his burden and mine of caretaker was over. I beat myself up for months because I felt such a feeling. It took time to come to terms that no matter what I was feeling that it was fine. That's when I was finally able to breathe again and come to peace with my father’s death and the horrors it caused me.

Hawkgirl experiences death so often! Her soulmate, Hawkman, and her experienced hundreds of reincarnations, always coming back to life to find one another and do the same again. But it’s when Hawkgirl remembers her past lives and finds out who she is and her inner strength is able to come to terms with her lives and shine so she can be the flying goddess she is!

Have you had a death that you’ve had trouble dealing with?