Love.

It is a warm summer day in July 2oo7. My mom and I were on our way home after a long afternoon of volunteering at the animal shelter. My mom’s phone rings as we sit at the stoplight waiting to turn. My phone rings next. It is my neighbor’s daughter, Jillian. “Did you hear the news yet?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I realized then that my mom was on the phone with her mom. Jillian hesitates. “I will let your mom tell you,” she says. My heart starts to race and my palms begin to sweat like before getting a shot. I know something is very wrong. I begin to panic and ask Jillian to just tell me what is going on. I look at my mom. “You have got to be kidding me,” she says into the phone. She looks at me and tells me my dad has been in an accident. We turn the car around. Ironically it happened a block away from the interstate exit we just got off at. No wonder traffic was so bad. As we drive in silence down the road I begin to see the flashing lights and the stopped traffic. My dad’s van comes in clear view. The driver’s side completely crashed in. It was t-boned around a telephone pole. My mom rushes out of the car and across the street to the ambulances. I stand there outside of the car staring, baffled at the scene in front of me. It was like watching a scene from a movie. I was speechless, stuck in my tracks unable to move or think. I watched as cars drove past the wreck, pass me. I stared at the people in those cars thinking about how I too was just like them, going through my day nothing out of the ordinary. Now here I am.

My father and I have never been close. Both my parents are in the Army and when I was young my dad would frequently be away on business, so often that I did not recognize him when he returned. Naturally I gravitated toward my mom and to this day it is still that way. As I grew up I watched as the bottles of beer and boxes of wine disappeared from the refrigerator. Children are observant and I knew that my dad drank but I never labeled him as an alcoholic. My parents never fought or hit each other so I did not think anything was really wrong. My mom and I would have little jokes or comments about my dad when he was drunk like on television shows when someone would pretend to hold a glass and drink from it. As awful as it is to admit we would say “cha ching” referencing to if he dies from all his drinking we would get a lot of money from insurance. I have always hated not having people understand what it is like not having any respect for my dad who is suppose to be my role model. I was sick of making excuses for myself. While other kids were making wishes on their birthdays for ponies and a trip to Disney World mine would always be the same. I wished for my father to stop drinking. It kills me that I wasted so many wishes on him.

My mom and I drove down the interstate on the way to the emergency wing at UAB. Sadly, I was not surprised this happened, I figured with time it was inevitable that my dad would get into an accident from drunk driving. We parked in the emergence section of the parking garage and walked down the halls of the hospital. People working at the desk were staring at me with puzzled looks on their face. I never understood why. I would think they would be use to people walking through the doors crying looking for their hurt loved ones. Eventually we found where we are supposed to go and then proceed to sit in the waiting room for hours. The nurses really did not tell us much. We knew he was not dead but that they were working on him. Most of our neighbors showed up. All of them sat there giving us that sad, pathetic look because they too knew something like this would happen to my dad but of course felt awful that it did. I felt so embarrassed having all my neighbors there to witness this awful even with us. I sat in silence. The show “Jackass” was playing on the television and there were young families with their children sitting around us in the waiting room. I stared at them wondering what they were here for. Did their loved one get into a car accident too? Did their child have an ear infection? It always made me curious what had happened that people were waiting in an emergency room for and at that time, I was one of those people.

We went home that night not ever getting to see my dad. I remember sitting on the bed still in a daze of fury. I honestly did not even want to go back to the hospital and face him. The next morning my mom hauled me to UAB were my dad was in intensive care. He made it out of the accident with a broken collarbone, hip, quite a few ribs and a bruised lung. I walked in his room and went straight for the coach. On the television was “Judge Judy”, a show my dad watched religiously and of which I despised. I hated being there. I was so angry I did not talk the entire time. My dad was mad and did not understand why I would not speak to him. I left without saying goodbye. Later that day my mom and I went to ProTow to get the things out of my dad’s van. As we walked towards the van I was speechless. It seemed surreal like I was in a dream. The driver’s side was completely bent in. The seat was smashed in all the way to the passenger side. I did not even understand how my dad had not shattered his whole left side of his body. We took out all the important things from the van and put it in a box that sat in our garage to mock me for the following weeks.

After only a couple of days in the ICU my dad came home. My neighbor had brought up his recliner and put it in the living room since he was not able to get in and out of a bed. I still had not gotten the courage to talk to my dad. I became a prisoner in my home as I crept quietly past him to and from my room and the kitchen. He would ask me to get him something and I felt so awkward helping my own dad. My neighbors said I should just confront him about his drinking but I was too much of a coward.

I always felt the burden to keep the secret of my father’s drinking. I was embarrassed to admit it and just like an alcoholic I denied it for years. Somehow my family moved on after my dad’s accident and things eventually got back to normal, fighting and all. I would have thought that being in a traumatic accident would awaken my dad and he would stop drinking but that never happened. During my senior year of high school I started acknowledging that my dad was an alcoholic. My friends were not surprised as they already assumed that it was true. It was liberating to not hide it anymore. The only person that I needed to stop hiding from was my dad.

Somewhere along the way, during one of our many arguments, I gained the courage that I never had. I made a statement to my dad about being an alcoholic. Usually at a high point in our argument my mom would walk away and let us fight. My dad was so outraged that he screamed in my face like a drill sergeant repeatedly to “take it back.” I of course would not and so he proceeded to yell and back me into a corner. I had never been afraid of my father but at that moment I was. For the first time in my life my mom defended me and told him to get away from me. It was nice to have my mom have my back for once. After that point there were many argument similar to that but still my father never changed. On Good Friday of 2010 my dad got arrested for drunk driving and got into a fender bender. When he called to ask my mom to bail him out of jail I was listening on the other line. I was so outraged. I unconsciously said, “How am I suppose to respect you when you are getting arrested and in jail?” Although my father is a master sergeant in the Army I have never been able to respect him and know that I never will. I understand that there are many hard things that he has been through but drinking was never the answer. I pray that he will find peace in his life and get better. I would hate for him to miss out on the future without his family there to share it with him.