Traci

August 22, 2016, the day that would end up drastically changing my life. It was about 3:17 in the morning when the sounds of sirens from cop cars and ambulances were screaming in the parking lot of the apartment complex. My dad stood there frozen, unable to move or speak. He was in shock. He didn’t know what to do, or how to help, she was just laying there lifeless. Her body was positioned as if she was trying to crawl, pleading for someone to help her, but it was too late. She was already too far gone. The love of his life, and my stepmother, gone at merely twenty eight years old.

Traci passed away only weeks before my freshman year. It was hard starting high school without the person that had motivated me so much in the past. A few days prior to her passing we had began fighting more than we ever had. The last thing I said to her the night I left was that I hated her, and wished she was never in my life. It was hard seeing her go. She was so young, and had so much left to live for. She never got to see her daughter start school the following year. When my dad told me about her passing I was broken. I felt responsible for her death.

Traci had been sick for days prior to her death, tylenol and alcohol ended up being the killer. Her liver was three times the size of a normal human being. The day she died, my dad was supposed to take her to the hospital, but she insisted that he go help his mother, and she’d be okay until the next morning. That was not the case. My dad got home that night and she had been asleep on the couch, so he let her sleep. That was a mistake. When he woke up to get a drink later that night, he walked in on the horrors of his dead wife. The woman he loved was just gone, lifeless on the floor. Her death quickly turned into a murder investigation for a brief period of time. They assumed that he killed the woman he loved the most.

The months following her death were nothing besides hell. We moved into my grandparents house because my dad couldn’t walk back into the apartment without picturing his deceased wife. All he did for months was lay on the couch and drink away the pain in the darkness, to help suppress the darkness from within. By that December, he had almost drank himself to death. He is an alcoholic, and no matter what that will never change. He was in the ICU for days, and my sister and I were never told the severity of his illness. My dad could’ve died, and I would’ve never known how. The doctors said if he wasn’t forced to go to the hospital that night he would’ve died in his bed.

The past three years have been a rollercoaster ride. From trying to take care of my father and my siblings, to taking care of myself. My grades began to slip because I wasn't focused on myself. I was diagnosed with depression, but I got passed it. My father is currently sober, and I hope that it can stay that way, because my siblings and I can’t afford to lose another parent. Drinking can kill a person, and it took one of the most influential people from my life, and it almost took a second. Cirrhosis is a terrible disease, and it’s a disease that may take my father one day, but I just have to be strong and focus on me, and my future. Traci may be gone, but her memory and the motivation she gave me to do my best in life will never fade away.