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A year or two ago, my father passed away. It was painful for the family as he had only recently died during the Christmas holidays. He had a bad accident, a car hit him but the driver fled before anyone knew who it was. That night, no one had found him and he was injured on the side of the road trying to get up. Early in the morning, the police found him and took him to the hospital where they still weren't sure what to do with him as there were no available beds, not even at the emergency room. They had put him in with those quarantined patients. As soon as that happened, there were consequences that not only destroyed our family but we almost lost our home too. Of course, none of this really mattered to me because I was in another city with my then wife and my child at the time. I had turned off my phone without picking up to anyone, solely focusing on work while looking out at life from a window.
The phone just sat next to me as I worked, not picking up to anyone. My family and I rarely communicated, only seeing each other on holidays. This was something that I didn't know then and now regret immensely. The holidays are a difficult time for me due to the regrets that come with them. Those were the days when my smile disappeared for months at a time. Two days after, a man came into work to tell me that my father had been in an accident. He said nothing else, giving no details or contact info for my mother or family members who knew more than I did. They all knew what had happened but failed to warn me of it. Eventually, I passed out at work from shock and panic about the accident- maybe it would have been better if I had passed away with him that day? It's not like everything after that was easy- he went through so much trauma from the accident and all of the pain he experienced in life afterward...
I couldn't help him then. I always wished that I might have been able to be there for him, but it was impossible. Despite the pain he caused me and my mother when he hit us, I had found myself a way to love him in spite of it all.
One day, a lawyer came along and said he wanted to sue the insurance company and the person who hit him with their car, for the surgery he needed to save his life. We didn't know at that time that this was going to be the start of it all. Lawsuits started and he was helped- they put metal splints or plates in his legs to help support him. The holidays were coming up and I had already taken too many shifts so I was the only one not there when he needed help. The important thing was that he survived- or maybe not. Surgery helped him, but much damage had already been done by then.
He was able to recover from the surgery, but the injury had already taken its toll. We prayed, pleading with the emergency room staff for someone to come check on him, but they were all busy tending to other patients who were in more critical condition from Covid. I begged my bosses to let me go and see him, but they had secured housing for me so that I wouldn't be homeless threatened to fire me if I didn't show for work. My son hadn't done anything wrong and I couldn't risk putting him through that stress; being on the streets with no food until we could figure out what we should do next. But later I just quit. On Christmas Eve, I got a message telling me that he had passed away.
I withdrew from society and stopped interacting with people. Each day felt different because of my frequent contact with police and the courts. People seemed convinced that we killed him because of the not existing insurance. Every visit to court where people accused us of wanting my father dead made it difficult for me. That's why I left town in the first place. Run away from all of this toxic people.
Our lawyers wanted to take our house away from us - an inheritance from ancestors life time savings - and use it to pay for the surgery and legal costs. So we took out loans on top of all the other bills, which had built up over the years, in order to keep them from taking our house away from us. We did not get the insurance nor compensation for his death, but we did get a payout after the police and court ruled that the "attempted" murder was slander. We then sold our house to pay back all the debt we had accumulated: taxes and lawyer fees as well as piles of debt we took out for all of this.
Let our children not grow up in a terrible world. Together we can make it better. It is our destiny to
suffer from the past, to long for the future, but to forget the present.
Any unsourced images and writing are my own. Life is worth it!
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