Swim Above Water~ Amoeba Awareness

So, this my attempt to write something down as a parent who has lost a child.  Lost one of the most important things in my life.  Loss without a choice or a possible fix. I struggle with what to say and how to say it. I completely understand that there are parents/families who have had a similar loss but the cause of that loss was/is different than the we have experienced.  Although the tragic outcome is essentially the same, the road we have gone down is different.  So I feel it necessary to state that I am in no way trying to compare my loss with theirs or anyone else who has suffered loss of this magnitude.  We have friends who have suffered the loss of a parent or spouse and that loss, at this point in their life, is probably the greatest loss they have experienced so far.  It's just that though - their greatest loss. They can't imagine anything worse than what they felt, or are still feeling, when it occurred.  That being said...here are some of my condensed and abbreviated thoughts from a fathers point of view after loosing his baby girl.

Guilt. Absolute guilt.  How do you live with something that eats away at your conscience. I can't recall how many times I told Hailee I would never let anything happen to her.  So many times as a little girl when something bad happened in her life, by a simple statement and hug, she felt safe.  My daddy will protect me.  My daddy said he won't let anything happen to me so I'm ok.  Part of the guilt I feel is - was she waiting for me to fix this.  Did she know enough to realize what was happening to her and just kept waiting for me to make this go away like I always promised?  My dad will keep me safe...why isn't he doing anything.  Unfortunately this was something I could not make go away.  All I could do was wait and hope that it would get better.  Did I fail her?  Did I not do enough, as a dad, to save her.  Very hard to live with that on your conscience.

Pure and absolute sadness.  What I won't get that I should have.  Hailee would have started firearms safety that fall and would have been out in the woods with my that year in her first deer hunting season.  Although I realize she probably wouldn't have actually shot at a deer, she would have loved sitting out in the woods with me.  Experiencing all the things that she had heard me talk about.  Wanting those experiences for herself.  To hear a sound off in the distance and getting excited that a deer might be coming - only to find out it was a squirrel not to far off.  To actually see her first deer while actually hunting and knowing she has the chance to take one down.  Knowing how I respect the aspect of deer hunting and have pride in taking a clean shot.  She would have loved it.  Teaching Hailee how to drive.  It might have been a stressful undertaking but it would have also been so worth it.  Watching her catch on to the little things.  Dealing with her first boyfriend, her first breakup, her first love.  Turning eighteen, graduating, going off to college.  And then there is the big ones.  One of my main duties in life would have been at her wedding - giving her away to the man she loved. Every time I think about it,  my heart feels like a crumpled up ball of aluminum foil.  There have been weddings since her death that we have attended and it's always hard.  The first wedding we attended after she was gone I thought I might have to get up and leave because I didn't want to make a scene.  It wasn't something I did on purpose for attention or whatever, I just couldn't control the emotional release as I watched the brides dad give her away.  It's tough.  And then of course there is Hailee become a mom of her own.  Watching her go through that joy.  Turning to her mom for guidance when she gets scared or doesn't know what to do. There are a lot of aspects between Hailee getting married and having her own kids that I won't go into but I think this is where a lot of the void in my life come from.
Anger.  Unrelenting anger.  I cannot convey to you the amount of anger that I carry on a daily basis.  For me it just won't go away.  It's difficult for me to grasp the simple fact that I could do nothing to save her.  It was as if I just dropped her off somewhere and left her on her own...alone.  What about all the people who don't deserve life?  Yes, I said it.  There are so many people who don't deserve life or the life they were given.  How can someone like Hailee not get that chance to live a full life while there are people rotting in prisons, never to get out, but yet live late in their years.  Murderers, rapists...basically a waste of a human being.  Hailee on the other hand truly loved that fact that she was simply alive, that she had life.  Being able to go over to her friends house brought her so much joy it was as if she won the lottery.  She loved to laugh, see other people laugh, see other people have fun.  How can someone so pure and honest end up losing their life before they actually start to live it?  Is it just bad luck?  Chance?  Was she supposed to die young?  Why didn't we get a say in the matter?  Shouldn't I have been given to the choice to change places with her?  Why is it I don't have my daughter anymore?  I believe in free will and I also believe we have choice.  When that is taken from you, when you don't have choice, it is there that the inner conflict starts.
Hailee changed my life when she was born.  I will forever cherish the man I became because of her.  Not to take anything from our boys as they have had their own individual affect on my life and hopefully they know that I love them just as much.  But Hailee was a girl, a daughter.  Changed the kind of person I was.  I couldn't be the same person as I was/am with our boys.  I'm no longer that man I was when she was here.  I can't be.  That person was for her.
I think deep down we still hope once in while that this still isn't real.  That what we think is reality is really just a dream and at some point we will wake up and see her beautiful, smiling face and watch her bounce and skip around.
I was given some simple yet direct advice just following the service I would like to share with you.  I was told to "Clear your conscience".  I wish I could Uncle Chuck, I really wish I could.

Hailee's Dad