Growing up, I was extremely close to my father. He was my support system, my hero and my best friend. Our relationship had its ups and downs (as with any parent and their teenage child), but he never stopped being there for me. He was a rare breed in that he was genuinely giving and kind, and there were few people that he couldn’t make smile. He was a friend to the world and made it a point to make everyone feel special and included. My father was a pilot and a machinist. He flew planes for 10 years and worked in construction for 30. Despite his consistent work schedule, he always managed to live his life to the absolute fullest and always made it a point to put fun before anything else. To him, life was about the company you kept. He didn’t care what he was doing, as long as he had his favorite people to do it with.
He did all the cliche dad activities too: he cheered the loudest at my little league games, made terrible unfunny jokes, and took my siblings and I on fishing trips at the shore; but unbeknownst to me, he was dealing with something that would not only change his life, but everyone elses around him. My father struggled with addiction most of his life, and around the time I started high school, his problem began to get worse. He bounced between substances, but never let his addiction affect his ability to be there for myself and my siblings.
After high school, I became more independent as I started college and began to branch out from my family. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I started to rekindle the relationship I once had with my father. Although I had grown up, we still made time to talk on the phone every day and he always made it a point to tell me about all the new projects he was working on. Although we were close, I didn’t realize that during the time that I had spent away from my family he had been slowly reaching for harder substances and eventually became entirely dependent on them. My family did their best to help him, but addiction is sometimes stronger than the assistance that loved ones can provide, and my father passed away from an overdose on November 4, 2019 when I was 21 years old.
Change isn’t something we often come across with ease. In the best of cases, change can take a lot of hard work, dedication, and careful planning, Unfortunately most change, through no fault of our own, happens without our consent. The biggest change that happened in my life occurred when my father passed away. In the months preceding the funeral, I was lost, and I felt like I was walking through the world completely alone. Instead of feeling broken, I felt rage. I didn’t know how to accept the change that suddenly occurred in my life and to someone that I held so dear to my heart. I was angry at myself for not being able to help him, angry at the world for looking past a problem that affects millions of people, and angry at him for leaving the world before his time was supposed to come.
Addiction is something that touches the lives of millions of people every single day. If it’s not you, then it is someone you know. For most people, this sort of thing always happens to someone else. It’s always a friend of a friend, or someone in their community, never the person they care about the most. Looking back there was not much that I or my family could have done to prevent anything from happening. The individual must want to seek help, and without that personal motivation, there is not much that anyone can do to make them want to get better.
Three years have passed since my father passed away, and I have changed so much since then. Anger may have shaped my motivation for success, but acceptance of the change in my life has solidified my ability to keep going. Since his passing, I have graduated from college with an Associates Degree in General Education Science and am attending my second college to achieve my Bachelors Degree in Media and Communication. I started my own social media management company and am currently creating content for small businesses and an upcoming music and arts publication. Living in the wake of my fathers passing has taught me to live everyday to its fullest potential and to cherish those I love the most. My father was a big part of my life, and in many ways still is. My siblings and I do our best to carry on his spirit and his ability to find fun in everything we do with the people we love. Life is what you make of it, and choosing to reject change will only make you angry. We don’t have to accept the things that present themselves to us (in fact if we did the world would be a scary place), but we do have to understand that change will always happen, even without our consent. There is bliss in the acceptance of change, but satisfaction in our reaction to it.
