The Ocean of My Being

August 10, 2009... I cannot even begin to write about what happened on that day. Everything is still a blur. All I can think of is that, on that day, I lost the most important man in my life, the man who made me what I am and who I am, the only man that I ever truly loved-- my father. He succumbed to the Big C only four months after the lump he had on the left side of his buttock area was diagnosed as a malignant tumor. I just couldn't believe it. It was too soon. I've always known friends and even cousins who have lost their fathers, and I did feel for them, but I just couldn't relate. I couldn't picture my life without my father. I was confident that my dad would grow old with us up until he's 98, that's what he always said as the age that he would be ready to go because by then everything would have been in order and we'd all have been stable. I never imagined, not even when he got sick, that he'd go thirty years too early. The first time I