My father’s death.

When I lived with my father things got out of control and I moved to my grandmother while waiting for my mother to arrive to Piteå from Kosta. My mother and I decided I would move to her because I couldn’t live with my father.

The day before my mother arrived I woke up by my grandmother talking on the phone crying. My father had a stroke and he was at the hospital. My first reaction was that he was going to be fine. But either way we went to the hospital and got to sit in a room. I refused to talk to anyone but my mother, my family tried speaking with me. I went into my father’s room a couple times but everytime I freaked seeing him to being able to talk or to move. When our eyes met I could really feel that he didn’t want me there.

During that night my mother arrived. The next day we moved my stuff into the car before we went back to the hosptial. I tried once again going into his room but once again I freaked out and ran out to the elevatiors looking for my mother. My father’s girlfriend’s daughter ran after me.

Mom and I got ready to leave. We went to our cabin outside Sollefteå. But I can’t remember if we were there a day or two.

The day we were ready to leave my mother stood by the car with a look on her face I never had seen before. I asked her what was going on and she said nothing. So we left.
Later we stopped at a gasstation and I bought a magazine, some candy and a red bull. When I got back out to the car my mother stood leaning against the car with the same look on her face so I asked her again what was going on and she told me “you are going to hate me if I don’t tell you now. Your grandmother called, he didn’t make it”. My world came crashing down and I started crying and screaming all at once. I threw myself in the car and my mother threw herself after me to catch me. Mother held me while I cried.

Later that day I called a few people close to me to tell that my father didn’t make it. I decided with a friend that she would follow me to my father’s funeral. It didn’t take long before she canceled. She had something more fun to do. So me and my childhood friend decided she would follow instead.

Before the funeral we got to see my father in his coffin. I was to scared of the corpse to hug what used to be my father.

My mother had planned the funeral, the only things I really decided was the music during the ceremony and what was going to stand on his tombstone.  The obvious song choice for me was Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends and on the stone it says Beloved father, son, brother.

As soon as I stepped into the curch I broke into tears. I stood by the coffin crying during the music and while people lighted their candle for my fahter. When we went outside to lower the coffin into the ground my legs wouldn’t carry and I sat down infront of the hole. I didn’t say a few words, while everyone looked at me I just threw down my rose. My mother and my childhood friend tried pulling me back up on my legs. I didn’t join the get together after the funeral, I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to smile because he lived, I just wanted to run away from the problem which was exactly what I did.

My relationship with my father was complicated and there was alot that happened, he treated me very badly but he was my father and at first I didn’t know how to live without him, I still don’t.

The loss of my father sent me into a even deeper depression than the one I suffered when he was alive. The first year after his death I had alot of nightmares and I woke up kicking, screaming, hitting and crying.
The dreams were always similar. My father died, we burried him. When we got back to my grandmother’s house he was alive. Standing on her porch. Sometimes he’d admit that he died others he didn’t know. I still have those dreams sometimes, and everytime I get a moments confusion if he really died or not.

In the begining my mother was my rock. She comforted me, came running when I woke up screaming.

It was after he died I took my first overdose. ‘Cause I wanted to be with him, a reason of why I keep trying to kill myself is because I don’t know how to live without him. I don’t want to live without him.

 

Music is connected with memories.

When I hear some songs like I get a warm feeling in my body that brings me back memories close to my heart.
“Christy Road” ” by Green Day is one of them.
When I hear “Christy Road” I see myself as 12 again, I’m sitting in a medium room with a drum kit, guitars and basses. I see myself sitting on a bed in front of a TV playing “Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess”.

Other songs makes me feel cold and chills down my spine, those songs brings me back to memories close to me as well, but in another way, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day, is one of them.
When I hear “Wake Me Up When September Ends” I’m 15, standing all alone with my hand on a coffin. My father’s coffin.

Music does a lot to us. Both good and bad.
When we hear a song we remember some things that happened, things that can feel the same way it did back when it happened. How we felt, the environment around us, everything can seem like it did in that specific moment we remember.

Music.

I am having a moment when I sit and listen to music with tears in my eyes. With a feeling of that I am missing someone, and I do.
My father.

Me and my father’s relationship wasn’t good at all, but we had something that we shared. Music. I swear I have NEVER seen my father so proud of me as he was when I sat behind the drums playing in front of an audience.

I’d really need him to tell me not to give up on music right now. He truly knew how to make me believe in myself. He knew what to say to make me believe I had a chance to be successful in music.

Me and my mother can sit and listen to music, but we don’t share the music like me and my father actually did.

I love and miss my father, I truly do. It’s just complicated. I am angry and sad with him. I wish things would have been different, but we somehow gave up. Our relationship didn’t seem to get any better. Maybe he felt guilt for what he did to me or for what he put me trough, but I am ashamed for what happened. I can’t forgive myself leaving when he was sick. I just couldn’t believe he would die. In my eyes he was strong, a fighter. The fact tjat he’d die didn’t excist in my world.

This summer it’s four years ago that he died. I will never forget the day my mother told me he passed. I will never forget the furneral.
He was supposed to turn 45 only a month later, next year he would habe turned 50. What would that have been like? What would my life look like if he didn’t die, if he didn’t get sick?

It all came of a sudden. He just got a stoke and a few days later he passed.
Two days before he passed I was picked up by my mother after a decicion that was made a couple of months earlier. I was supposed to move home to her. I remember that when we were packing the car I saw my mother stand looking straight out in the forest with a empty look on her eyes. When I asked her what was going on she told me it wasn’t anything. After about an hour we stopped at a gas station. I got some candy, a magazine and a Red Bull. I remember that I had a poster of Green Day in the car. I got back to the car and mom had the same look om her eyes. This time when I asked her she told me:
“If I don’t tell you now you are going to hate me for the rest of your life. Your grandmother called. He didn’t make it”. I threw myself into the car and I cried and screamt. It happened, something I’d never could imagine. My father was dead.
At the furneral we played “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. Even though my father died in June, Green Day was something we justed to enjoy both of us. I started crying the moment we got into the church. I stood by the coffin alone for almost 10 minutes alone during the furneral. When it was time to burry the coffin… I broke down in front of the empty whole in the ground. I sat there for the entire time. My mother and my childhood friend tried almost lifting me up. I didn’t move. As soon as the furneral was over I left. I didn’t stay to spend time with the family, I couldn’t stand being around them, not without my daddy.
It’s been 3 and a half year.

Last year I almost lost my mother to the illness she had been suffering from the past 30 years. I have never been so scared. I was about to lose my only parent alive. If we got the call only a couple of days later my mother wouldn’t have survived, the call that they had a new organ for my dear mother.

Oh wow. I just realized how much I wrote. How it started with how important the music was for mine and my father’s relationship to explaining the death qmd furneral of my father to how I almost lost my mother. I hope this won’t depress you. I just needed to share this. I couldn’t stand carrying it alone at the moment.