My brother's roommate went to visit his father after a trip to California and found him dead on the kitchen floor. How does one cope with finding your father dead? he proceeded to get obscenely drunk on the day of the funeral. I guess that's one way. It still hasn't really hit him yet, he has not cried.

My other friend had been losing her dad for years. After his second battle with cancer and numerous sessions of chemo and bone marrow transplants, his body could take no more and he died. What's even worse is that he left a nineteen-year-old daughter and a sixteen-year-old son with Cerebral Palsy. They will go to live with their grandfather, as their mother walked out on them years ago.

When I think about losing my own dad, I panic. There is nothing in this world I could ever have done without my daddy. I know I will lose him soon, he says so on a daily basis, and no men in my family ever really live past the age of sixty. My dad is forty-nine. A combination of his terrible eating habits, his smoking like a chimney, and his already weakened heart from a previous heart attack have left him considerably more vulnerable to death than your average person.

I try to imagine what I would do, how I would feel, if he were to leave me right now. I would really have no one to rely on. My mother would be grief stricken, my brother would undoubtedly turn to the bottle or the needle. He does not deal well with tragedy. Would I be able to act like the adult I say I am? I have had my fair share of crises to deal with. Hell, my life reads like a fucking soap opera script. But when it all comes down to it, will I be able to bear the burden? Or will I crumble under the weight of my own apprehension?

I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that when the time comes, no matter how well I think I've prepared myself, I will never be ready for the real event. My dad means everything to me. Losing him will be the heartbreak of my life.