My Dad Is Dead

V O L U M E 1

My dad is dead. That sounds dramatic -- and I guess it is --- but mostly i just had to get it out in the open so we can just get on with it. So we are on the same page, eh? yas.

My dad died, and I wasn't there. I'm still not. I don't know how to be.

I'm still not there . What I mean by that is that 10 years later --- I still can't be in that moment. The moment I got the call. When I start to think about the moment I shrink inside myself like a child and run.

I had been working at subway at the time. I had missed a couple calls from Michigan the night before and I was so tired when I got home that I didn't even listen to the voicemail. I assumed they were debt collectors. Since leaving Michigan, and my divorce with my ex being finalized, and I just didn't want to deal with it.

I got a call from a Michigan number so I decided to answer. It was the wrong number, they were called to ask me about organs. They mentioned my dads name, but i figured this was because of  his drivers license or something.  While on with them my mom called and I switched over.
It was around 5 pm . I answered it to see what was up. She had just returned to Michigan from visiting me in Florida, and I wanted to make sure all was well.

"Honey, I...need to talk to you..."

There was something in her tone that seemed off. It was like every cell in my body shriveled up in anticipation.

"What's up mom? Did you get unpacked?"

"Ashlee I love you. I need you to listen carefully."

"uh okay, whats up?"

"I just spoke with Aunt Mary. Daddy got in an accident at home, he had to go to the emergency room. He had an aneurysm."

"oh my gosh, thanks for telling me. how is he doing, which hospital? "

"Ashlee...."

"mom he's okay right? he will be fine?"

"Ashlee they tried to save ..."

"MOM tell me he's okay mom. mom he's okay right? let me talk to him"

"They tried honey, they couldn'-"

"stop saying that mom. stop lying. stop saying that to me. what do you mean. stop it mom. stop. i want my dad where is my dad"

"daddy died Ashlee"

Those three words. They were a start of a revolution in my life. Those three words punctured me and all that I am and it's in those three words that the darkness began to creep in. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know that 10 years later i would still be overcome with darkness.

I couldn't speak. I remember her yelling in the phone, "I need to know you are okay. ashlee. i need you to talk. i need to know you arent okay. i need you to call doug. you can't be alone. ashlee? ashlee?"

I summoned the courage to speak. "Im ok. I have to go. i am going to call doug"

"call me right back"

Doug had been working at Verizon. I called his cell. over and over with no response. I called his store and no one was answering. Apparently it was a busy day.

I didn't know what to do. My blood was flowing through my body in a way I had never felt before.

I called Doug's mom. I don't know why but I knew i couldn't be alone. I needed her to find him.

"Hello? "

"Hi Betty, it's Ashlee. I need you to get ahold of Doug as soon as possible. He isn't answering his phone"

"What's wrong?"

There was a pause I didn't see coming but makes perfect sense now. How do I say this outloud? I had only just found out and already I had to say it out loud.

"My.. my... my dad died. I just found out."

"Oh Ashlee." she wept.

In a matter of fact kind of way .... almost as an announcement to myself and her, i heard myself say
"This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me"
"I will find doug immediately"

We got off the phone in some way. I don't remember.

I called Andrea and Joshua.

I don't remember the conversations, really.

I don't remember when Doug made it home, i just remember crying so hard in Doug's chest that night. Harder then I knew possible. I could feel my heart breaking with each breath and it was physically painful. I'd fall asleep for a few minutes while taking a breath from the tears, wake up and say "Did I dream it?"

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My dad died the night before. The missed calls were the hospital and the organ donation call was legit. I was the next of kin and they had to know if I wanted to donate my dads organs.

My dad died the day before and I didn't know. I didn't feel different. I didn't feel my heart breaking when his stopped beating. I had absolutely no indication. He was gone for hours before I ever knew.


I know this will sound unusual. It's not me not being in Michigan to save him that I am so guilty of.  What i need to forgive myself for is not knowing he was gone... and for still even to this day not being able to be in that moment.

I need to forgive myself for my inability to talk about him without breaking apart.
I need to forgive myself for having no photos of him up, for not talking about him much at all.



V O L U M E 2

I woke up suddenly last night. I was shaken up, in more than one way.  He visited me in my sleep. I don't remember much about the dream, I just remember dreaming that he was gone. I remember that feeling (which would greet me again in a few short minutes) where every cell in your body tightens.  I dreamt that he died.  I don't remember the hows or whys of it. I just remember someone told me he was gone and my entire life crashed before my eyes.

I was relieved when I woke up. It seemed like I had been dreaming for years. It seemed like more than a century I believed my dad was gone. But I was awake now. I could hug him. I didn't have to wear that same ugly black and white bathroom robe that hands from my bathroom hook that smelled like him. I didn't have time to process all the things that knowing he was alive would mean because I was interrupted with sharp, searing pain.

"No, you were dreaming. Your dad is dead Ashlee"

And then I remembered.

I remembered again. I remembered over and over. I remembered why the pain was so familiar. I'd been feeling some form of it for more than a decade.

He was gone, and he was still gone, and I remembered.

The start of this recollection can be found here: My Dad Is Dead: Volume 1

When my dad died, as I mentioned before, I found out from the organ donation people.  I booked a flight that night for the following morning. I didn't think I'd sleep that night at all. But our body has a miraculous way of doing exactly what we need it to even if we protest. I fell asleep eventually. I didn't sleep all night, I spent that night sleeping for about 20-30 minutes, waking up to look up and Doug and ask if it was still true, and then I'd wail myself to sleep again.

Once I arrived in Michigan, I had to go directly to the funeral home.  There were decisions to be made and I was the only one to make them. You don't think about that when you are the only child of a parent, and for all intents and purposes are a child yourself. I sat at the table with my mom, and my dad's siblings and I were asked questions. I felt like I was watching it happen from afar. Once we worked through the details, the flowers, the length of service, and whether it would be a cremation or burial, the attendant asked me a cruel question.

"Would you like to see him?"

Would I like to see him? I suppose that's the way you would ask that question, it would be weird to say "Would you like to see the body" or "Would you like to view the deceased" when you are talking about your own dad.  But it felt cruel. 

I don't know if its better to  (better seems like the wrong choice, but work with me here) see your loved one passed away in the hospital or not. I've only really experienced the latter. Part of me wonders if seeing them in a medical facility would be less shocking --- but on second thought I suppose the shock of the event overshadows the location or setting.

I had never really been comfortable at funerals seeing a made over body lying there in a casket. It never truly looked like the person, and there was something about it that triggered a fear in me. I wasn't afraid of something happening, I was scared of the finality of it all. Of knowing that this was the last time I'd see the person. To look death in the eyes and know death won. 

"Miss Haggerty?"

"Yes? Oh. Yes."

I remember thinking at that moment I mostly said yes because I knew that was the appropriate response. I have had a tendency of doing that in my life. I say the things that are the most palatable answer for those around me.

I was lead through a room that was smaller than expected and I saw a mass laying on the table. I was offered privacy and mostly nodded because well, I don't really know why.  I don't remember if my family was in the room or not with me. I just remember there was a lot of space between that body and mine.  I instinctively took a step forward, I didn't have time to tell myself to be brave or to mentally remind myself that it was going to be okay.  My eyes met his face.

It felt at that moment that hours passed, although I know it was for a moment. I couldn't touch him. That was my dad. The man who made such a big deal out of all my birthdays that I grew up thinking being born on 6/26 was more special than every other day of the year. This was the man who was a physical light to every room he walked in. My dad who stayed up at night watching old black and white movies with me over the best banana splits ever made.  He called me his lucky star, he couldn't have loved my bright red hair more. There laying on the table was my lifeless dad... but yet it wasn't him.

It wasn't him of course because he wasn't singing loudly off key, or bargaining with someone about trading home decor pieces. It wasn't him because there was no smile, no grey-blue eyes staring at me, no lips calling me "Ashlee" in only the exact way he did.

But there was another reason it wasn't him.  He was small.

A few years prior to my dad passing I moved to California. I wasn't there long, although in retrospect for such a short period of time, it weirdly shaped a lot of my life after.  After I returned to Michigan from California, I stayed with my dad for a short period of time.  My dad had weight loss surgery during that time and was just beginning to lose weight as I followed my journey to Florida.  The day I left for Florida, was the last day I would ever see him. When he hugged me, he was still soft and substantial. The same bear hug I had received my whole life. While I did see a photo of him at a drastically smaller weight while in Florida, and as we talked on the phone several times a week he kept me updated on his progress, I had never seen it with my own eyes.

This man laying on this table who looked a lot like my daddy wasn't him. He was so thin.

I think psychologically that has a lot to do with the issues of it all. I saw my dad's body there --- but it was not the body I recognized.  It was him but it wasn't.

I wanted to be strong. I was the one who was supposed to be strong. The decision maker.

But I couldn't. I couldn't be in that room. I couldn't speak to him one last time and tell him all the things my heart ached. I couldn't look at his face and hands, the only recognizable parts and bid my dad goodbye.

All I could do was run.
One could argue this as a running theme in my life. Run to marriage. Run from marriage into the arms of new love. Run from that love to the arms of pain. Run from pain to the love of my Dad.  I've run a lot.

So I ran. I ran out of the room and up the olive green carpeted stairs. I ran through the memorial room, out the door to fresh air. My lungs burned. Not from running, from not breathing. I don't know how long I didn't breathe, but it was enough to hurt. When I got to the parking lot, I intended to run to my mom's car, but quickly made a turn around the corner when I saw more family members approaching the building needing desperately to wrap their arms around me.

Typical Ashlee would have piled on their needs and succumb to the hugs, ignoring the instinct to run. But in this instance, I was no longer in control of what was happening. I ran. I ran so long and far. We were in MY town. The town I grew up in. I knew the streets, and buildings, and people. So I ran. And when I couldn't run anymore, I walked.

Somehow the running gave me enough energy to get back to the funeral home. An out of body experience of signing contracts and going over finances ensued.  I made it through.

My Aunt asked me if I was staying at the house.
She meant his house.
I never thought this far ahead.  But surely I would be comforted by it so I nodded.

As we pulled up to the house and got out of the car my cousin Scott, the oldest of my two cousins saw me and ran to me as he yelled out "Ashlee".  He knew this pain too. Him and his sister, my beloved cousin Lisa.  They lost their dad too. When he said Ashlee, it was in such a way that he understood the pain I experienced. This was an embrace that I too embraced.  I feel like seeing him and Lisa gave me the strength I didn't know I needed as I walked through the door.

I walked in and the house was as I expected it would be. It was perfectly him. The smell of his house was always the same. There wasn't an emptiness you might expect. It was just as if he ran to the store and he would be right back. There was milk in the fridge,  rye bread by the toaster, and coffee still left in the coffee pot.  For a moment I was fine.

Maybe not fine.

For a moment I was protected?

I walked into the bedroom, the bed was unmade. You could see the outline of where he laid and I collapsed. I collapsed into the bed and cried for hours.

My best friend Andrea came over after work, and she crawled into the bed because I couldn't move as I just cried and cried and told her I couldn't do it. She said two words that were probably more comforting to me than any of the others in the coming days. She said, "I know".  She didn't try to pacify me, she didn't tell me it would be okay, she didn't ask me questions about how I was doing or what happened or anything like that. She knew. She hadn't lost a parent, but she knew my dad. She knew that me losing him was impossible. That there was nothing that any person could ever say. She just knew.  She laid with me and I slept.

The next few days were hard. I had to make calls to people. I had to see sides of people I didn't expect. Ugly sides. Mostly I had to comfort. That is the weird thing about funerals... you go to honor the person sure, but you also want to support and comfort the loved ones... but so often they end up supporting you.

So many conversations. So many tears.

I packed up his home and had to sort through the things that I wanted to keep. How do you narrow down what is important and what isn't? I held onto more items than I needed to, in an almost desperate attempt to have as much of him to myself as I could muster. 

My dad is dead, and part of me died too. One day, I'll talk about him without shedding a tear. One day I'll tell you the greatest love story. But not tonight, tonight my dad is dead -- and I survived.