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I always try my best to remember that people's time here is limited. We never really know when our number is going to be called. Honestly, it could come at any given time. The last words could be words of hate. There's a man driving on the highway. He's driving toward his death, but he doesn't know that. One more curve and, oh s**t, there's a pile-up he didn't see coming. What's he thinking about before he crashes? Before he dies? Maybe he's thinking about his children. About his little girl's birthday that's coming up in a month and a half. Maybe he's just gotten in a fight with his wife. Maybe he was late for work and had no choice but to speed.

Is he thinking "What if I turn this corner and BLAM, I die.."? No. He's not.

Because he doesn't know.

The poor man driving that car, with bruises from his job in construction covering his arms and legs, who has two little girls at home and a teenage son, who has a wife at home who loves him, no matter their arguing, is going to die. Fast or not, he won't be thinking about it before hand. And he's going to die. It's the end. He's going to blink out.

That's the end.

The family gets the news, but it doesn't sink in right away.

Am I not going to actually believe he's gone until I go to the funeral? Am I going to cry again once I see his coffin?

This isn't a time for sadness. This is a time for remembering. To understand that I will never again see him. That, even though my younger brother and I were planning, merely four days ago, to go and visit him, that there will never again be a time where he'll hold me tight for far too long. That his eyes aren't going to look into mine, or roll so aggravatingly at me when he's irritated, because.. He won't be irritated at me again. There's a picture of him in my hand. He's smiling brightly here. He's frozen in time like that, in this simple picture with two other people I don't know. And I wonder.. Is he smiling now? Was he in pain when it came to an end? Was he... Alone...? Could I have somehow found a way to make sure this never happened? Haha.. And then.. Well.. If my mother had just stayed with him, to help take care of him, would he still be alive?

His passing makes me hate all the horrible things mom said about him. Comments about how he wasn't good enough in bed. About how he didn't make enough money. She says that he was a good man, but she told me she felt nearly nothing upon hearing the news of his passing. What does that make me? God, I wasn't sleeping with him. I wasn't the one planning to marry him. Then.. Why was I effected when she wasn't? The tears wouldn't stop coming. It couldn't be true. Of course... I knew it was. He'd had a seizure in the middle of the night because he didn't take care of himself.

What if he did it on purpose...? What if his heart had been broken by my mom, and, in the end, it was simply too much to bear? I can't ask him...

I can write down memories, though, so I'll never forget.

Like the time I had a friend come and stay with me for a month. He walked in on her in the bathroom and I died laughing while they avoided each other.

Or like the time we were facing hard times. We got taken away from my mom and he was there through it all, doing what he could. God, I could never thank him enough for that.

My favorite memory, however, was when I was in school. Junior year of high school. I got a call from the office and figured it was mom. Come to find out it was Jerome. He told me he and mom were fighting again. I shrugged it off and then he asked me to go to the movies. It was totally cool. I got out of school, reading yaoi in the car while he drove, and we went to the store. We bought a bunch of random s**t and then got to the movies, stuffing all of it into my backpack and getting in without a question. We went to see Wolverine. At the end of the movie, we drove home and he told mom he just picked me up, because he was in the neighborhood. After all, it was around the time I got off school anyway. We never told anyone what happened that day. Well.. At least not until today, when I finally told my mom.

The only vivid memory I have was near the end of his and mom's relationship. He'd gotten a job, roofing houses.. His legs were so torn up.. I told him over and over to gt shin guards.. His legs just looked so.. Wounded..

I tried my hardest not to cry today, hoping shock would overthrow sadness.

But loss and fear are the two ******** things that can bring me to my knees.

And I fear we've lost, not only the only fatherly figure my mom ever managed to find, but a close friend as well.

Mom should be taking the kids and I to Jerome's dad's house soon, because he wants to see us. His grandkids. And I know that I'll cry again.

I just wish I could have seen him one last time.

I just wish this whole thing was some elaborate lie.

...

Rest in peace, dad.