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I suffer the illness of my father. The one the doctors never discovered while he was still alive. He kept searching for the answers, but it was my bother and I, we were the root of his illness.  He left me you see when I was about 3, though he recalled it as 7. But that’s just when he married Her... the other woman, the church secretary. How dare he leave me for her? I was just a little girl. She already had children, this other woman. She and he moved away from me to another state far away. Now I couldn’t see him on weekends anymore... and I was a daddy’s girl. It tore my heart out. That little tiny body of mine, left to grow without a heart. 

Mother moved us to the ocean. Where my cries were drown out by the sounds of the crashing waves. On the darkest days, my heart cried out the loudest. The fog horns would join me in mourning. Oh daddy, I needed you so... but you just had to leave me behind. Yeah, we had our summers and every other Christmas. Thanksgiving once in a while. It was great to know you Uncle Dad. I loved you so much...but you left my heart bleeding. You left it lying there on the floor. You could’ve picked it up and tried to put it back in...but you didn’t. No, you went about your life raising her children...like they were your own. Leaving me and my brother to live as a latch key kids. With our poor single mother who had to work two jobs to support us. And you, you never came to see me...except that one time. That one time you just happened to be in the neighborhood. 

Well I remembered. That...I never forgot...and when I was old enough, an adult, living on my own, in sunny Florida, I invited you to come to me. You said you’d never come to Florida. It really hurt me. You couldn’t even understand how deeply that knife cut into me...and exposed that old wound. But it let me see...it was just a mechanical heart in there. I didn’t need you. This thing would keep ticking...so long as the battery was good. And hey...anyone can buy a battery. So I cut you out...but stayed just connected enough. There was still a tiny little thread keeping us attached. 

Then there was the wedding...my step-sister’s wedding. Oh you sure wanted me there. You bought my ticket. I was planning on going. Then someone asked me why and I couldn’t come up with a good enough answer. I was confused. I lashed out. I called you. I told you I wasn’t coming. I explained all the why’s. I also told you lies. I didn’t think the truth was good enough. I didn’t even know the truth. But I did know this truth . You and your wife had more concern about how it would look. How would it look if one of the siblings didn’t attend? So what? I’m gonna go watch my father give away the girl who was the beneficiary of MY life? She got to be my daddy’s girl not me. I told him that. I let them know how much it pained me. And I cut him out once again. He got cancer after that he didn’t even tell me. I heard it through the grapevine...long after he’d battled through it. He gave me the excuse he didn’t want to alarm anyone. But She knew. She knew so long before me. She got to be there for him. Why? Because she was his daughter, not me. I didn’t go to my own brother’s wedding either. But I heard about how this woman, my father’s wife, referred to my brother as “our son” during her toast at the wedding. Well OUR mother was there too. Our REAL mother. But she just has to dig. Because she hates my mother and so did he. But She was the fuel. She is a trouble maker! She stole my daddy! 

I went back though, a couple years later. After my beautiful tiny niece arrived. I saw him then and was reminded of how much I still am a daddy’s girl. I adored him and he adored me it was always so sad to leave him. We decided to have a relationship. He had it all pictured. What he thought a relationship between us would look like. We were going to check in every couple of weeks. So we began to, but it got longer between calls as I started waiting for him to call me again. Then one day I got the call he was sick with pneumonia and then some weird skin thing that was eating away his flesh. Months went by as they tried to get him healthy. But he wasn’t going to get healthy. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong...but I knew...my brother cut him out too...and he lived only 2 blocks away...and he blamed this Woman...and he blamed our father...and he wouldn’t let him see the baby anymore. It hit my father so hard...and he couldn’t get to forgiveness...because he married a woman without a soul... and she kept him stuck in judgement....so he instead became sick. And all the lifetime of neglecting us...because he was bending to the needs of this petty wanna be upper class wench...it all came to get him. Then I got the call...

“I think I might be dying, Jess.”

He’d been seeing doctors. Trying to find out what’s wrong. But they couldn’t diagnose it...because...it was US...my brother and I...all the judgments of his wife...all the pettiness. His congregation would never know...he could never fully be the loving man he was. Not with out me. That was his err...I was his illness...once stuck in his prostate, now stuck in his digestive system...that failed him...because he failed me...and he knew it. He could’ve said no to her. He didn’t have to follow her lead. So, she was stronger than him....he didn’t want to suffer the consequences. So I suffered them for him. And now I suffer again. I took on his illness. Ever since the moment I first heard, I started feeling this pressure behind my rib. 

I went to see him for 10 days. It was so wonderful to be in his presence again. I saw the color come back into his face. He was so gray when I arrived. He looked like he’d been in a concentration camp. And I watched as his body gained weight... for 10 days ... I was his healer... his life force energy...he was starting to get better. So he and his wife decided decided to go ahead with their trip. You know that one to Florida...that place he said he’d NEVER go...the place he’d been vacationing for the last several years...in the exact city that I had lived in, but no longer did. Still, he’d never come to see me.

He checked into the hospital almost as soon as he got there. No one knew what’s wrong. His bloody stool not enough info to go on. So they released him...with a bed sore...and no one knew it...except he was ill. His wife was mean and demanding... even as he was dying. Back to the hospital he went. Surgeries began. Still nothing. Chasing around some phantom. He got sicker. Pneumonia again. They couldn’t operate. He wasn’t healthy enough yet. So I went to see him...and his heart was lifted. But he was just a deflated balloon...laying there. I was unusually calm. I shared this energy with him. I used these healing hands on him. I could see it making him feel good. Warming his heart. He seemed to be getting better. Surgery back on schedule. Hopefully he’d be on to physical therapy. But no...he was dying...his time was coming to an end. 

I remember our last moments together. I remember him saying, 

“I’m real pissed off that you’re leaving, Jess.” 

I was thinkin’, “I’m real pissed off that you’re leaving Dad.” 

We were just starting to have a relationship. And now he was leaving me again. And I couldn’t stay to say good bye. I had to go back home. Back to work. Cuz God knows your fucking job is more important than your dying father. The nurses stole our last half hour. That’s all I had left...and those bitches took it from me. Because hospital time schedules 

are more important than you getting to say goodbye to your dying father. 

I hoped he would recover. His wife finally decided, for the first time ever, they would come to visit me...once he got better. They’d come in the summer...

A week later I got the call. They told me he had a stroke...the brain damage is too great. They gave him a 1% chance of survival and even if he were to make it, they’d only give him 6 months. How the fuck do they know?! It’s all bullshit!

They decided to remove the life support that same day... he wouldn’t want to live that way. And I was stuck here, 3000 miles away. “My father is going to die today.” I asked my brother to hook me up on Skype. He called me, hooked me up, but the light was too dim. I couldn’t see but a shadow...with a miniature image of me in the lower left hand corner. I was watching myself say good bye to my father.

“I forgive you dad.”

My brother told me that he blinked. He was still communicating you see.

“I love you dad”

he’s blinking

“I’m sorry”

blink

“I love you sooo much!”

Tears rolling down my face, I see myself. I see what he sees. This is who he sees saying good bye. Surreal...strange...watching myself say good bye. My brother watched him die. He held his hand and they unplugged the machines. I heard he bit down on the tube as they tried to remove it. His wife was spooning him. My oldest step sister was there. My brother just kept repeating “I love you...” as he slipped away. And I heard it all second hand... Gone... died right there in that very place... where he said he’d never go... not to see me... not EVER for anyone...

And now...he was laying there dead.

But before he left, I took on his illness. The one no one can figure it out. Because it’s between he and I...it’s OUR illness...our tie that can never be broken.  Now I’m out here bleeding again. But this mechanical heart keeps pumping. And so... I walk around lifeless.  Trying to find my real heart.... Maybe if I find it...someone will be able to put it back in...