Flashback to Being Ten..

I hope this one will help everyone understand how I lost my father when I was ten. Please note this one might get a little emotional or too bookwormy (i made that word up haha). I want to tell ya'll my story but i also want ya'll to understand it while reading about this certain story, okay? okay :)

My beloved father had a really bad habit of smoking cigarettes since he was like thirteen (that's what he told me anyway). When i was five or six i wanna say i asked him to quit smoking and he did now normally a doctor would tell you to slow down then quit but no he just stopped! Although the reason i asked him to stop is because i learned in school what was in cigarettes and what could happen to you after smoking for a long time... Cigarettes contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing compounds and 400 other toxins. Cigarette ingredients include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT. Also containing nicotine which is a highly addictive chemical.

There's different types of sickness you can get from smoking cigarettes. These types are: COPD meaning Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease which includes- Emphysema and chronic Bronchitis; Lung Cancer and if you have Asthma tobacco smoke can trigger an attack or make an attack worse. Also smokers are 12 to 13 times more likely to die from COPD then non-smokers. The reason why i just told you this is because my father had COPD and Emphysema which got worse in 2010. He had to be put on oxygen tanks to breath because he couldn't even walk a foot away from the stairs without coughing and not being able to breath and in the summer it was worse from the dry air. Since he was put on the oxygen they considered my father disabled and started to give him a social security benefit check to be able to provide for him family and himself. Not much longer after he got his first check he decide to move to a new house something smaller because he didn't want to share a room with my mother anymore, he wanted to isolate himself from her because he didn't want her to see him like that all through the night and also during the day..

Therefore my father stayed in the living room of your home because it was cooler and it was comfortable for him then other places in the house. My father was a tough man he never let sickness, stress or anything really get to him so as for him being on oxygen or being ill was nothing and he kept being himself and still went to work; until one day he realized that he was getting to sick and he couldn't so my mother found a job to pay the bills. Now it was hard for her because she would go to work then coming home to clean, cook and help my father. She was tired and too overwhelmed by all that, and of course she yelled at my sister and I because we weren't helping her out... So eventually we did and that when my dad started asking for my help instead of my mom's i guess because he realized how overwhelmed she was but i don't know.

I remember the constant things he would ask me because he would be to tired from coughing and not being able to breath to do for him like for example he would ask to make him food and get him something to drink. Then when it came to the worse times when he was not able to breath and coughing he asked to turn the fan on high and face it on him, sometimes to grab him a cup of ice cold water to help calm him down, to grab tissue because he would strain so much he would have tears coming down and he needed to blow his nose. There was a lot of things he asked me to do for him..Did i get tired of it? Yeah sometimes because i was trying to do things i needed to do but i got over that fact and realized it was for the better. 

One evening my father called my sister and I into the room and told us he was going to the hospital after mom got off of work cause he wasn't feeling very well. When i left the room he told my sister this " tank i might not be coming back from the hospital so if I don't its going to be your job to take care of your sister, brother and your mom." She didn't quiet understand but in a way she did. When my mother got home my dad and sister left with my mom to take him to the hospital and i was forced to stay home with my little brother Frankie. 

The next morning my mom woke my sister and I up and told us that my father stopped breathing at 3 a.m. and they had to put him on a ventilator- gives the patient the ability to breath. After they put him back in his room about an hour later he woke up and tried to pull the tube out of his throat; which if he had it could have ripped his throat and he would be able to talk. Therefore they were forced at that time to restrain him to the bed. When hearing this it was heartbreaking knowing that if my father was home he would have died in bed all alone in our home. 

When i got the chance to see my father it was even harder to see him tied up and asleep with a tube in his mouth not able to wake up and talk to me and to tell me everything was okay.. It was scary seeing him like that and thinking that yesterday was the last day i would speak to him... After the next couple of days they told us there was no signs of improvement on him breathing on his own so we had to make a decision on to take him off the machine or wait longer...

We decided to take him off because we didn't want him to suffer anymore, we wanted him to be at peace and not fighting and hurting.. The Day came and i ended up getting a stomach bug and couldn't go and my cousin that's like a bigger sister to me named Bre'Donda stayed to take care of me.. I felt bad because she wasn't going to be able to say good bye to him before his last breath.. It really sucks not being able to say that last good bye to one of the most loved ones it makes you think of them every day; it's like it was meant for a reason or something but I don't know... All i know is that i'm glad my father is no longer suffering and is living a happy and peaceful life with god and is a angel with big gorgeous bright white wings and is watching over my family and me.. :)

To my beloved father Eddie Benavides Sr. i love and miss you daddy..