The Best
In life there is very little we can count on.
Its been said 'the only two things in life that are certain are death and taxes'
That's a hell of an outlook on this world from the get go.
I want to share this pain that I carry with whomever is willing to read this, or may know the pain I speak of.
Four years ago I couldn't have sat here and wrote this blog without having cried to the point of having to stop, therefore, having not been able to finish even this much of it.
Even now my throat is trying to clamp shut, the tear ducts are barely holding up and still I can feel the empty space in my heart as if time has not passed, in my mind I know that it has, but in my heart time stands still, four years later. I knew a man with such a beautiful gift for loving me.
He rarely said it. I recall hearing, "I love you Stacy" as he hugged me at my sons funeral. I saw tears in this mans eyes as he spoke those words to me.
I had only seen tears in his eyes once before that time in my life, that was when he spoke of his father, who had died when he was young. His father left behind a wife, two sons, and a daughter.
This man knew how I felt now for he felt the same pain then.
It must have hurt knowing that.This man showed me that life isn't always fair, that really no one is better then the one next to them, that woman shouldn't talk like sailors, that hickeys make woman look cheap, birth control is just a license to "go fuck whoever you want"! He showed me how to check my oil and to know when it needs changed and how to change it.
How to check my antifreeze, change a flat, what makes a carburetor work, and that all girls should know those things so that they never have to depend on a man for something they can do themselves just as well, just not as fast. (part of the life's not fair thing)
On November 21st ThanksGiving Day 2002 this wonderful man told his children that he had lung cancer, and that it wasn't just isolated to the lung area for it had all but ravished his entire body by that point.
He had only been told this by his Dr the day before.
He said they know its lung cancer because the tumor originated there and had grown through along the heart and was nearing the spine. Death was inevitable.
Dr's gave him 3 - 6 months. I spent I would say 55 of the 64 days he had left with him, either driving him to radiation, or just sitting watching the history channel so that he wasn't left alone.
I saw this man,
a Marine,
a father,
a husband,
a brother,
and a son
cry, suffer, moan in pain, bargain, plead, deny, reason, and accept this fait given him.
I heard him talk to his Nannie, (his great grandmother).
This man didn't speak of God often in his life but he sat up on his death-bed and said he believed there was a place prepared for him in heaven, he hadn't spoken for 2 days prior to that and didn't again coherently after that.
The hole in my soul has never gotten smaller, and the painful absents I feel inside has never gotten better, easier, or lesser to this day.
I miss my dad like I missed him the very day I watched his soul leave his body.
He was the greatest man I have ever known.
He didn't want to leave us, but he had no choice.
My father held our family together, without my father here, my family has grown apart.
Everyone in that family has declined, none of us have recovered, none of us can move past it.
God I miss my dad.
James W. Carter
Feb. 2ND 1945 - Jan. 23rd 2003
