A Father’s Daughter
By: Alissa Lopez
One day while swinging in the park, I notice a little girl with strawberry blonde curls who is lifted from off the ground, tossed into the air and immediately caught into the arms of her father, safe and sound. I am I hit with a pang of sadness as I realize I can’t have this. I don’t remember what it’s like to go to the park with my father. I don’t remember being tossed into the air. I don’t remember seeing the joy on his face as he held me in his arms. I don’t remember lots of things about my own father, but there is one thing I will never forget.
My mother’s screams paralyze me as I sit in the backseat of my family’s car. I was only five years old and it didn’t really occur to me what was happening and how my life was about to change in a matter of hours. “Someone please help me!” my mother screams out between her sobs to the passing cars, but they just keep passing by as if we never existed. Finally a truck pulls in front of our van. The person inside the truck, for years would be known as “The Good Samaritan” in our family. They take us children into their truck to get us out of the way and to keep us entertained. After some time passes by, a family friend comes to the scene and takes my sisters and me to their house to spend the night. As we were at the home, I can recall telling everybody how my dad was dead. Nobody had told me anything, I already knew.
Red and blue lights shine as police officers question my mother. Two ambulances, along with a fire truck and several police cars surround my mother and my van. The van that still holds my father inside. The paramedics take my father and put him inside one of the ambulances, my mother is close behind. They already knew he was gone.
My father died that day of a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven. My mother was left behind with five girls, the oldest twelve and the youngest just barely a year old. Five girls were robbed of their father that day. I was robbed that day. The most precious thing in my life was ripped away from me in a matter of hours. I am reminded of the pain I hold when I think about how I have had to grow up for over ten years without a father that never tells me he loves me. A father that never tells me how everything will be okay in the end. A father that never catches my tears. A father I never see. When my friends talk about how their fathers have helped them through a certain time, I am reminded about how I don’t have that. Each time I see my friends with their fathers I am reminded about how I don’t have that. Every Father’s Day I am reminded that my father is gone and I am once again taken back to the moment inside my van that dreadful day.
As I sit there in that swing at the park, watching that little girl with her father, I am reminded of a happier time. The only memory I have of my father before the day he died. There is laughter and a knowing of being loved. That’s when my mind starts to wander. My father’s death has brought me closer to him in ways I never imagined. The best days are the days when I am told I hold a trait of my father. It’s the one time I feel connected to him. My father’s death has given me strength. I have grown from it, and still continue to grow from it. I am my father’s daughter, and even though he has passed away, he continues to teach me, through his death.
