The last time I remember REALLY crying.

With the group of friends that most of my free time is spent with, there is a running joke that I have no soul. I was born without one, without tear ducts as well. The running joke is that I am inexplicably unable to cry.

I'm not 100% sure when this happened, but for tonight's post, I've been challenge to relive the last moment I remember REALLY crying. Not a few tears, but REALLY crying.

Buckle up kids. This may be a sad one.

Okay. So, if you've been reading my blog for an period of time, you know that my dad now lives with Jesus. He died Christmas of 2010 due to pneumonia and a host of other issues. He's in a better place, and I am healing one day at a time. That's semi-sad, but I want to paint you a picture of the last day I saw him.

I took  a day off work. Tuesday to be specific. My dad was at St. Rose hospital out in Henderson, in hospice care, and we all knew it was nearing the end. There was a point in the early afternoon where my dad was sleeping. He was pretty heavily sedated... propofol...morphine... the good stuff. My brother and I sat in the recliners in the room, and the nurse walked in. She was one of the best nurses we'd had in our six month hospital rotation, but when she walked in with a clipboard full of forms, I knew the time had come.

There's nothing in the world more sobering than those forms... the conversation. We woke my dad up, and asked him point blank what he wanted to do. Did he want to keep fighting? The doctors had told us there was no hope, but if he wanted to keep fighting, we would've. He said he was ready to give up the fight. He was in so much pain, you could literally see it all over his face. We put him back into sedation, and my brother and I had the conversation. My dad was so drugged at that point that he didn't have any power of attorney at that point, we did. His care, his future, his life was all in the hands of me and my brother, Nicholas. 

I was selfish that day. I wasn't ready. I don't know how I really ever could've been, but I knew I just wasn't ready to have him be gone from our world forever. When I told my brother this, he cried, asking me what I wanted to do. He was leaving it up to me. Everything. Every decision was apparently up to a 21 year old girl too emotionally distraught to even know what day it was. We decided the time had come to sign the papers. Give him morphine, but stop all mechanical help with breathing. Basically, whenever God was ready for my dad, he could have him with no fight from us.

That was the last time I remember crying. 

I didn't cry at the funeral. Everyone else was, and I was so... bitter at that point. Looking back, it was just the grief, but I couldn't help but think "crying isn't going to bring him back you idiot. stop."

I hope, dear reader that I painted a vivid enough picture for you to see why I don't cry anymore. I don't cry at songs. I don't cry at movies or commercials or e-cards or anything else. After you've made the decision, even if you know it's God's plan, to end someone's life, crying at anything else seems... 

empty.