I Promise I’ll Be OK
By: Kim Randall
Tags: Grieving, Loss, Grief, Grief And Loss, Life

My Mom and Dad on their wedding day.

“I promise I’ll be OK…yes, I’ll be careful”, I reassured my mom on the phone mere moments before looking around my one bedroom apartment one last time to make sure I wasn’t leaving any of my cherished belongings behind. With everything I owned packed up in a U-Haul, I hitched my white 98 Grand AM GT to the back, and prepared to make the 17+ hour drive to Florida. I was ready to leave my life in Missouri.

I needed a change, but more than that, I needed my mom.

In roughly 17 hours I would be a Floridian.

My mom worried. She worried about my safety, my sanity, and my future. I worried about those things too, I just didn’t realize it at the time because at that moment every feeling I experienced was overshadowed by sadness, anger, and disbelief.

With 27 years of life packed away I left Missouri and moved to Tampa to be closer to my mom because only she knew how to make everything better.

Only her hugs could make it all hurt a little less.

***

6 months earlier my most unimaginable nightmare became reality. On August 20, 2007 my dad suffered a fatal heart attack while recovering from a broken pelvis in a rehabilitation center. That gloomy summer day was the last time I answered the phone without imagining the worst.

At that exact moment there were two Kims…the Kim before her dad died & the Kim after.

I was devastated.

I no longer understood life.

Nothing made sense.

Any ounce of happiness drifted away as quickly as death claimed my dad.

My heart was broken into more pieces than any boyfriend had ever left it.

The one man that never wanted to hurt me, did.

I was a mess of emotions that I didn’t want to deal with. I wanted to sleep because my subconscious wasn’t mourning the death of someone I loved so deeply. I wanted to be numb…numb from the pain, numb from the memories.

That Monday is a day I’ll never forget. It was around 5pm when I heard my phone vibrating repeatedly in my purse above the student cubbies & lockers. After a couple minutes I decided to see who was blowing up my phone thinking it was probably just a persistent bill collector…I would have given anything for it to have been a bill collector. On the other end of the line was my mom. As soon as I answered I knew something was wrong. Maybe it was her tone, maybe it was how many times she called in a row…whatever it was, I knew something was terribly wrong….and that’s when she said what I thought I had prepared myself for for years…”Kimmie, dad died this afternoon.”

My phone fell out of my hands just outside my director’s office. I ran into the kitchen at the preschool I taught at. My immediate thought was that these kids couldn’t see me so sad. I had to get away. I sobbed next to the refrigerator while my boss tried to understand what was going on. I remember my best friends showing up to take me and my car home. I remember telling them I’d be OK, that I didn’t need anyone there. I remember for hours trying to make sense of what my mom had told me.

“No, he can’t be dead. I never called him back yesterday.” I screamed to my mom.

“Kimmie” she said softly ”…he’s gone”

For years I had prepared myself for those words…for this day, but nothing can truly prepare you for the moment it actually happens.

You see, my dad was a diabetic with many complications that caused him to lose both of his legs. His health was poor & when I was in 8th grade he was hospitalized, in a diabetic coma no one thought he’d wake up from. I remember the doctor trying to put everything into perspective for me by telling me that it was very likely he wouldn’t live to see me graduate high school.

I’ll never forget standing next to his lifeless body trying to process everything the doctor had just told me.

From that day forward I never wanted to go to the hospital to see my him. My mom would force me to go. I would get so mad at her. We fought nearly every single time. I was a miserable, sassy teenager who did nothing but make life harder for her.

In all honesty I now realize that I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I hated seeing my dad so colorless, so lifeless, so…so not my dad, but I couldn’t admit that to my mom. Instead I became every mother’s worst nightmare…a hormonal, sarcastic, mean teenager.

But even at my worst, she loved me unconditionally.

My dad had this contagious vibe to him. He was always so full of life, cracking the cheesiest of dad jokes. We were two peas in a pod. He wasn’t just my dad, he was my friend. He wasn’t supposed to be sick so often. Too many holidays were spent without him at home due to an infection, another amputation, heart complications, back problems & even skin cancer.

This was my life & eventually I became numb to it all.

I thought all those years of coming home from school or work to find out my dad was once again in the hospital had prepared me for that fateful call, but I quickly realized nothing prepares you for news like that.

I don’t think I could have ever been prepared to hear the words “Kimmie…dad’s gone.”

I wasn’t prepared to not have my dad walk me down the aisle.

I wasn’t ready to never hear his voice again, or to read another email from him, or laugh at his lame jokes. We’d never sit on the back porch late at night together. There’d never be another hug or kiss. I’d never get the chance to return that phone call. I’ll never hear him tell me he loves me or that he’s proud of me. I’d never hear him sing in church again.

I’d never make another memory with him again.

I went to a wedding not even a month after he passed away. I didn’t want to go & if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have went if it wasn’t family. I didn’t want to be happy. I didn’t want to be around people. I remember fighting back the tears during the ceremony & completely losing my shit during the father daughter dance.

I wanted to be home, in my pajamas, on my mini couch where I could be sad without judgement…where I didn’t have to fake smiles and laughs…where I could simply be the me I had become.

That green and white striped mini couch became my bed, my kitchen table, & my desk. From the time I walked through the door at the end of the workday until the time I finally passed out each night, that mini couch was the most consistent thing in my life. It’s where I sobbed uncontrollably for hours. It’s where I would talk to & argue with God. It’s where I’d lay while talking to my mom on the phone. It was my safe place…the place where I could shut out the world.

When I was on that mini couch I didn’t have to pretend to be OK.

In the months following his death I noticed I began pushing everyone in my life away from me. So many friends didn’t understand why I was so emotional & those that did I didn’t want to burden. I would put on a fake smile when I left the house & push down all of my sadness. After all, “it wasn’t like he died yesterday”, as one of my coworkers so eloquently put it.

The moment my dad died was the moment I realized life wasn’t meant to be fair.

With my dad gone my life was different. I had changed. I was no longer the woman I thought I was. I found myself feeling lost.

I needed to be closer to my mom…so I moved.

I needed to fall apart in order to put myself together, at least that’s what I thought I needed.

Life had other plans for me.