I turned 15 in september of 1977. My dad had just retired from the united states air force after 29 years. In november of that same year, he got sick. In march of 1978 he was diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer. The doctor gave him two months to live. I remember standing the second floor solarium of our local hospital, shaking my fist at god, telling him I hated him, and that he really didn’t care about me or my dad. A month later, I went with my cousin up to Baltimore for her to get an abortion. She didn’t know until then that she was carrying twins. She had to pay extra because of it. I cried. She became very depressed afterwards. Then, the same week that my dad died, she tried to kill herself. Cut both her wrists. She lived. I remember standing at her bedside, just across the hall from where my dad laid dying thinking, ‘what kind of god allows people to live, that want to die, while killing someone who wants to live?”. Who did he think he was after all? She murdered two innocent babies, then tried to kill herself, while my dad laid across the hall, fighting for every breath… I remember one day when my dad was in the hospital, when he still wouldn’t use the bedpan, but couldn’t go to the bathroom alone, that I was there alone with him. He had to poop. He asked me to help him to the bathroom. I wanted to wait for mom to get there. (he was my dad after all) but he had to go, and finally told me, he couldn’t wait any longer. I stalled so long; I made my dad poop all over himself. I just stood there. I was so embarrassed for him; for me. He kept telling me, it wasn’t my fault, but I know it was. I should have just taken him. I wanted to stay with him over night one night. My mom said no, his brother, who had never even visited him in two months, came and mom said he could stay that night, and I could stay the next night. Well the next night never came. My dad died that night, at 2:45 am, may 14, 1978, mother’s day. He had lived two months and fourteen days. I never even cried when I heard that it was over. Dad was gone, never coming home again; meanwhile, my cousin came home the following day. Got married and moved away. Her life went on. So did mine. Life never slows down anyway. I didn’t cry again for four years. My job became a way to prove that god wasn’t god after all. He was a big bully. Going around choosing who would live and who would die. On a whim. Whatever. I started hooking school. Hanging out at all hours. My mom was the kind of mother that always said ‘wait until your dad gets home’. When the school called about me hooking, I asked her if I should just wait for dad to get home. I made her cry, I felt awful. I told her I wished she had died and not dad. I wanted everyone to feel as bad as I did. Some stuff you can never take back. Those words will haunt me until the day I die. I got married in dec of ’82. Got pregnant by january ’83. In march, I miscarried; it was a tubule pregnancy. I was in the hospital for 5 days. I got an infection. Anyway, I wanted that baby so much. And I was devastated. Why god? Why? What did I do wrong this time? It was 1984 before I got pregnant again. Not for not trying though. Pumpink was the result. I tried for 6 years, but was never able to get pregnant again. I wanted 6 kids, my husband wanted four. We got one. My mother became an alcoholic after dad died. When our daughter was 11 months old, mom missed a curve going too fast while drunk, and rolled her car 3 times, landing against a telephone pole. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was thrown forward through the windshield and then tossed back again into the front seat. The glass cut her scalp clear down to the skull bone, from one ear to the other. And rolled the skin backwards. She still has glass in there to this day that the doctors couldn’t get to. She was flown to prmc; after about 5 hours she was flown to johns hopkins. They told us her neck was broken, she had brain damage, and internal bleeding. Said she wouldn’t live through the night. She was home in two weeks. She was in a hospital bed in my living room for six months after that.