This is not a beginning to a happy ending. Almost 5 years ago, on January 2013 was the worst year for me. My family dealt with many complications. It all started to appear on July 1st, 2012. My father would always feel pain in his left leg. Nobody really thought something was up. My birthday was coming up on the 4th, the day was so cloudy and plain, that same day my dad had left the house in the afternoon as he always did. He came home about 2 hours later when he came home, he had a huge smile on his face when he just wanted to do anything and everything with us. He even took us to the beach on my birthday to enjoy some family time and we even brought my older sister’s friend Mary.

My dad was the kindest person ever to live, many people did not like him because he came over to the United States back in 2001 and worked so hard with 3 jobs trying to bring my mom and siblings over to the US, life was very difficult for my mom to work and take care of me and my 2 siblings. Our first winter, it snowed so much he took us to the thrift store right around the corner from our house and bought us snowsuits and snow boots and a pair of gloves even if they were not matching I still considered it to be the Best winter ever. We made made a snowman and it was my dad’s height and we went right back to the thrift shop to get baggies of extra buttons and a cute scarf to make it look like my mother and he showed her and we all went inside to drink her hot chocolate that my mom would make back in mexico. We did everything together and life was perfect even if we did not have a lot of money and our house was very small.

In 2012, I knew that year was not going to be a perfect but I still knew my dad would manage to make it amazing. He took us everywhere but that year, he received a call from Mexico and it was from my stepsisters. He was very proud that his oldest daughter Eddy was graduating from college, so he bought a train ticket as soon as he could and left us for a whole month. We were all kinda sad that we could not go with him and he called every weekend to check on us.He took a picture with Eddy and he was so proud of her that when he got to Mexico he headed to a car dealership and bought her a Pink Doombuggie as her graduation gift. He came back to the US and showed us all the pictures he took over there and he was told us about his time there with great pride and showed us the graduation pictures of her getting her diploma. He cried when she took him to the train station to make his his way to us. He later went to Happy Harry’s ad printed out the photo of Eddy and him and hung it on our wall for everyone to see.

On July 2012, he was not the same anymore, I noticed he lost a lot of weight and was very pale but denied that he was sick. He went to the doctors on July 2,2012. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and he did not want to tell anyone and months went by and he had many problems doing things and he took a lot of medication and later in November he could not get out of bed much and my mom took over the family business. Me and my siblings just stopped going to school until the end of February 2013. His doctors told us he had 6 months to live and less than a week he had passed away on January 27, 2013. We stayed with him a Hospice for his remaining time. My mom called everyone to my dad’s room where he was not awake anymore.

My siblings and I were very heartbroken. My mom stopped taking care of us and would zone out, our mom’s friend came along to help us deal with everything meanwhile. I had gone through a hard depression stage where I even tried to kill myself when I was only 12 years old. I was put into The Rockford Center and when I got out I started to do drugs and fight a lot in school. I completely gave up on any life I had. My life has never been the same ever again. My life changed forever and I still have an empty space in my heart that will never be filled up again.