Today is the day

So today marks the 5th anniversary of my dad's death. I am never sure how to spend this day and what the appropriate tribute to him would be. I don't want to call it a celebration because there is nothing celebratory of him being gone, nothing at all. I miss him every day and today it feels like that hole in my heart has been reopened. I have been reading over old emails that we sent back and forth when he was in the hospital in Wisconsin. He sounded better, hopeful and like he was ready to enjoy life. He only made it another two years. After he died his cousin wrote an article about suicide in the Denver Post featuring my dad and his story. To this day that article makes my blood boil. She had no right to write such a personal thing about my father but she did and it is on the Internet for the whole world to see. Shortly after the article came out she started receiving emails from people who had read it and thought she was so "courageous" for writing such a personal article. Let me set the record straight....

My Father and his cousin, we will call her "Dia", had only spoken once in the five years leading up to his death. They had not been in communication in a long time nor had they seen each other in a even longer amount of time. No one knew she was coming for the memorial service. She called one day and introduced herself (I had never met her) and said she would be to the house shortly. I thought it was fine, nice of her to come and support the family, little did I know she may have had other intentions. I am not trying to say that she came up just to get info for an article but it seemed weird that she was there. Anyways, she stayed for about 4 days and grieved with us as we tried to make out way through such a painful experience. About three weeks after she went home we found out through my sister's friend that there had been a article written that had circulated through the oil industry up in Alaska and elsewhere that was written by none other than Dia. She never told us she was writing an article and even after she did she never informed us. We found out about it from my sister's friend (who was 13 at the time). I was furious, my family was furious. I have always said that I was no ashamed of how my dad chose to end his suffering but I didn't think it needed to be published in the paper. I ended up writing her an email, in response she apologized but asked if I wanted to see some of the emails that she had been sent in response. I said that I wanted to see them so she sent them. Everyone who wrote was very sweet, loved the article, thought it spoke well of the struggle my dad had faced. They commended her for telling such a personal story when really it wasn't her story to tell. She didn't have any idea what we went through, what he went through. To this day I get angry when I think about her, what she did, the information she shared. I hope she learned her lesson after she was called out on what she did. I doubt it though. Not my normal posts but I feel I needed to set the record straight.