Today, my stepdad died 7 years ago from ALS or also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. This disease attacks nerve cells and muscle function that aggressively gets worse. There is no cure.
Nick, my stepdad, wasn't just a random guy that had been married to my mom for a year and I barely knew. Nope. Nick went to the church I grew up at. He knew me since I was 7 or 8 maybe. When he married my mom, I was 12... I had braces and definitely in those awkward preteen/teenage years. Then my mom and Nick were married for 10 years when he died. So this man... my stepdad was not just a man I barely knew. Nick was a father to me.
He watched me grow up. Nick was there at my middle school band concerts. He was there when I started dating boys... and I watched him embarrassed me as a new boyfriend came over to hang out. Nick also sent me my first flowers, a dozen roses, at school. I can still hear my mom and Nick singing in the car... practicing a choir song for church. After church on Sundays, he'd teach me how to drive (when I was 15 of course) so we'd take back roads and drive around North Carolina. We would have game nights and got Chinese food while we all watched movies. He would even give foot rubs to me and my mom. Nick would go to bath and body works... smell different lotions then buy one to bring home for us, just for foot rubs. He was special. Nick was there in his transformer wheelchair when Chad and I got married. He would make goofy faces and would make the most of every moment. These are the memories that make me smile and I think about all year long. How he would have made a funny joke about some sort of food... or when a Bon Jovi song comes on, I can see us singing at the top of our lungs in the car.
But today... today I think of the day he finally went home to heaven. The days before he passed were long. Nick had been on a ventilator for over a year and he had been bedridden for almost just as long. He couldn't speak and had used a computer that spoke for him that he controlled with his eyes. That last week, he couldn't even use that because he didn't have the strength in his eyes anymore. The days before his death, he was having fluid build up in his lungs. It was heartbreaking to see the man whose always been so strong, outgoing, and lively.... be dying from this terrible disease. Chad and I would rotate shifts sitting with him during the night while my mom could get some sort of rest.Then, Nick went home to heaven during the sunrise of October 26th 2012 and he was 43 years old. I saw him take his last breathe... and I felt peace in the room. As heartbreaking as it was to no longer feel his presence in this world... I couldn't help but imagine him walking into heaven.... walking.. something he hadn't done in years. He was no longer in pain, he was no longer suffering. Nick was finally healed and had a new body in heaven.
So I cry... and wish he was here to play with my children, to be proud of Chad and his military accomplishments while still stating Navy is better than Army ((side note: Nick LOVED Chad. Chad even told me before we were ever engaged that Nick told him if Chad and I didn't work out... Nick would still love him and be in Chads life no matter what)), I miss his big bear hugs, the advice he would give even when you didn't necessarily ask for it but gives it anyway... so I cry. I let myself be sad and think those selfish thoughts of wanting him here. But I don't let myself stay in that sad place long. I don't like to wallow or dwell on the sadness because that's no way to live and Nick wouldn't want me to do that. I look to the future now and I am thankful that one day I will see Nick again.
For those that have lost loved ones so dear to you... its okay to be sad. We are blessed to have loved someone so deeply. Just don't let the sadness overtake you.
The day my mom and Nick got married. I gained the best bonus dad.
