When a Person Passes, The Hope Does Not Have to Die

Photo Credit: Alice Popkorn Flickr cc

On a cold night in March, a midnight call heralded heart crushing news. To the responding parent, there was no more terrifying news than that which the caller delivered. Six hours earlier, the eldest daughter of three had attempted to take her own life and was now lying without brain function in a hospital many miles away.

The details and minutia are inconsequential. There are no words to describe the terror and pain that encompasses a patient at a time like that. Looking at what was once one's daughter and now an empty shell being kept alive by mechanical devices can produce feelings that no person should ever bare. However, there was no escaping the reality that what was a lovely, wonderful and promising young women was now gone, only the body left to be informed.

There is no way I can describe the pain and anguish of that traumatic event in my life. To watch the child that I played with, held, counseled, taught, laughed with, cried with, was now gone forever. A young woman with a bright and limitless future, that was now gone thanks to the demons that must have dwelled in her head to illicit such a response.

However through all the cries, screams and tears, the hope that someday that we shall meet again keeps me going day after day in her absence. Even though my daughter chose to take her own life, that I will one day know and see her again fills me with hope and joy. While it does not wipe away the terrible pain, it allows me to see that while she passed, hope did not go with her. Life is precious and we are all perched on the precipice of our own despair, yet we do not have to surrender hope.

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