Someone suggested that maybe I should come to this forum about grief and loss, so here goes nothing. . .I am 21 years and at the age of 13 I ended up losing my father. I'd like to start off by saying that my father was a very heavy dinker . . . He drunk from endless mornings to endless nights and he wouldn't stop. However, this never changed my perception of how I felt about my father. He was a wonderful father, he loved my siblings with a love that was equal and strong. I was a daddy's girl and when my father died, I lost everything. My emotions consisted everyday full of sadness and guilt and everyday I realized, I was slowly losing my sanity. I have endless grieving and guilt with this situation, it's like I simply can't let go as if I don't have the "will" too. I can't tell you the many days and nights I've spent having company with guilt and grief, can I tell you the many nights I've often cried myself to sleep. This has been an unimaginable tragedy for me, people say that eventually just have to kind of "get over". I can't get over it, there is no getting over it. I can't move on with I am still grieving and I can't move on when I'm still experiencing guilt. Guilt, that I could not give all of my time to him, guilt that I chose to move away with my mother to another state; guilt of how I last saw him and guilt that it is my fault. I cry myself to sleep just thinking about it, telling myself the things I could have done to be a better daughter. . . I would've known that he was sick . . . that he was dying, I would've tried my hardest to get done there as fast as I could. On that summer when I went down to visit, I found out he was dying two days before I had to go back up to another state to be with my mother. When hospice came and got him from his significant other's house, I didn't want to believe that it was true. When I went to the hospital and I waited in the waiting room . . . I still didn't want to believe it was true; but when they allowed me to go in and see him, I finally realized it was true. My last few memories of my father, they're memories that forever hunt me. I can remember every detail of the way that he looked, lying in that hospital bed. It was something gruesome for me to see, something that no matter how many times I try to make it disappear it will not go away. It's like the monsters that children talk about hiding under their beds, in this case this monster won't ever go away. I try to inquire good memories, memories that don't look like this. Memories that don't leave me crying, or asking myself over and over "why"? These memories leave me with guilt, sadness, and grief. I smile reminiscing the pictures of us together and looking back, and then guilt comes in not wanting to spare my hear t. I am a wreck, people often say that, sometime things happen that you just can't fix? Or everything happens for a reason, but you have to learn to move on and live you life. I can't move on . . . I'm not ready to, I need him back and I know I can never have that. Instead, I'll just suffer with the company of my friends grief and guilt.