Today Is The Day I Bury My Father

I just awoke to another day of my life.  My alarm has yet to sound, and I know not what the day will bring.  I am know what lie within my thoughts: all the regrets, laments, meanderings over why am I here and what is my purpose.  I often consider how the lives of my parents and sister would have far superior if the life of my own had never begun.

Now they are all gone, and it is only myself...

Why all the anger?  Why all the self-centeredness?  Why did I think of myself so?  My own pain and hurt at never having enjoyed the ideal family?  Why did I see my father's faults as something so grievous it had to obliterate all the good he did?  My father was not a perfect man, of course, but he was a good man.  He did the best he knew with what he had, and while it may be cliche to say so, it is still true: I will miss him.

Transition Thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

Three days ago, my father died.  Two days from now, I will bury him in the ground.  It's been more difficult than I ever imagined it would be.  

Since 2013, when I drove him to the Emergency Room at the Great Bend Hospital in Great Bend Kansas, I knew my life was now relegated to his care.  He needed help, and as the sole surviving child, the responsibility fell to me.

I didn't know anything about anything; but when one experiences one's parent in agony, unable to breathe, unsure whether or not they will survive, I had no other choice but to accept it.  Children should tend to their parents when parents are no longer able to tend to themselves.  While my dad rebounded from what would congestive heart failure and an eight-day stay in the Hays Kansas hospital (where he was flown by helicopter because of the apparent gravity of the situation), he needed my help to handle medical issues over the phone, bill collectors, expenses he did not understand, as well as transportation for lengthy trips he could no longer do on his own.

It's a regret of mine, an extreme regret in regards to both my mother and my father, I never considered their needs prior to this - and even when this event occurred, I never completely emptied myself of my own selfishness.  While I helped my father as well as I could, I still retained the annoyance of his needs interfering with my own selfish desires.

What a wretched man I am.