Life After Fana

Her little grin let me know that she knew she wasn't supposed to run towards the bridge that led over the crick. Her little face was bright and full of joy, reddened by a day of hard play in the summer sun. She looked back at us, and with a mischievous giggle she took off towards the bridge.

Naturally, her short little legs couldn't carry her fast enough. She sure tried though. I saw her momentum picking up as she ran down the little hill. I knew what would happen if I didn't grab her. She would tumble forward and get quite the booboo.

So I ran towards her and scooped her up. She never stopped laughing, even as she kicked and thrashed to try breaking loose from parental hold. I faced her away from the bridge and set her down, her little legs already making a running motion as they prepared to make contact with the ground.

It didn't matter what direction I placed her in, off she would go. Always giggling, always having fun and always enjoying life. At the end of the day, I was more than willing to accept my role as the Disruptor of Bedtime.

Every day, I woke up being a husband and a father. I went to work, which for me was much different than most other husbands and fathers. I chopped wood with an axe to provide heat for both my boss' and my family's homes.

I built various buildings, took care of the chickens, and even dug a well by hand. Just myself, a bucket and a shovel. I plowed, planted, tended and harvest a large garden.

I wrote my wife poems and songs, made her little creative gifts, anything I could so that everyday she knew that I cared about her. I played with my daughter, my wife and I would listen to audiobooks, and we just did life. Normal life and a normal family.

Nobody expects the crazy things to happen. I didn't expect it when the mother of my 16 month old daughter came to me and said "Kill me, I shot Fana".

That one moment, that one statement, changed every single thing in my life. I ran to my house to check on my little girl. I didn't believe my wife, to be honest. When I got there, though, there was no disputing it.

Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, could have prepared me for the scene that I walked into. I saw her in the bedroom laying on her stomach on the bed. At first, I felt relieved. She's only taking a nap, that's what I told myself.

But as I moved closer, my eyes took in the rest of the scene and my brain just stopped. There was blood everywhere. I could see the bullet hole in my Fana's forehead. Her little lips were pushed out and puckering slowly. Her little finger was twitching. It was awful. That's nowhere near a good enough was to describe that. Nothing can truly describe what I saw and what it felt like to see it.

I can't even describe what I mean when I say my brain just stopped. It just stopped taking commands. I wasn't even in control of myself, I felt like a passenger in my own brain. I ran to my bosses house, screaming and crying hysterically. She called the police and they arrested my wife.

The next day, the doctors told me there was nothing that they could do. She was being kept alive by machines. They were very specific about their definition of alive. Her lungs with working, her heart was working, but only because of the machines. There hadn't been any brain activity for a while. My little girl just wasn't there anymore.

So we had a baptism, and the hospital cleaned her up as best as they could. Despite all of the surgeries and all of the physical trauma that she went through, they were still able to dress her up and make her look pretty. They wrapped her head in a pink gauze bandage and put a bow on it. They put her in a pretty white dress and then the priest baptised her.

Afterwards, the brought me in a rocking chair and I sat down. They put her in my arms and let me hold her. I looked at her, held her, kissed her swollen, cold little hands and her puffy face for a while. I don't even know how long, and then I finally gave them the OK to stop the life support.

I held her, rocking my little girl in the rocking chair as she finally finished leaving this world. I felt that exact moment, too. I felt the change, and it was the most devastating thing I had experienced besides finding her the way that I did. I lost it. I cried like I had never cried before, and just held her.

They didn't try to take her from me. They let me hold her for as long as I wanted. I didn't ever want to let her go. I knew that as soon as I let her go, that was the last of Fana for me. I wouldn't ever get to hold her again. So I held her for that last time, and I focused on every little detail. I wanted to ingrain her into my being so that I would never forget how it felt to hold her, but this backfired.

To this day, I can feel that shift in the atmosphere when she finally stopped living completely. I can feel her stiffness as it grew as I held her. Her cold, puffy skin and the way that it felt in my hands.

We were living in Crown City, Ohio at that time. I had just lost everything dear to me. My daughter had just been taken from me in the worst possible way, and by my wife of all people. I went, in one single moment of someone else's choosing, from being a husband and a father and having a family, to being alone, and scared, and worried, and so sorrowful that I can never fully express it to you.

I couldn't stay in my home anymore. There was blood, bone fragments and brain matter all over the bed. It was so empty and yet so full at the same time. Just the thought of being there made my mind go so haywire that I would space out and lose a couple hours of time.

So I hopped on a greyhound bus and took an 11 hour ride to move back up north to be with my mother.

I have had so many struggles. I can't really sleep. When I do, I have the most vivid of nightmares. I relive that whole event every time I fall asleep. I wake up from my dreams every ten to fifteen minutes.

I have learned to deal with the phantom smell of my bedroom down on Double Creek. It haunts me. Nauseates me and makes it hard to eat. That had gotten better, but lately it seems to be getting worse.

I just want my daughter back. I miss Fana, she was an amazing, sweet, sunny little girl and I love her to the moon and back again. Life isn't the same without her.

I hope that everyone who reads this story will take a moment to appreciate the things in their lives that they have. Because they are not always guaranteed to be there. Things can happen that our so outside of our control, and they can completely modify your entire existence.

I don't eat the same food. I don't wear the same clothes. I don't sleep in the same bed. I don't have the same job. I don't have the same home. All of the people in my life are new. Every single thing that I had, all of the things that made me happy, the things I enjoyed with my family, were all taken away from me.

Appreciate what you have while you have it. Because let me tell you... Life after Fana just isn't the same. It's a shade of a half life, a little act that I try to keep putting on because what else am I supposed to be doing? I breathe in, I breathe out, and I am filled with such sorrow and such a feeling of lack that I can literally feel the wound to my soul. That's not just being poetic. It's my truth.