My step-father died Feb 1 2000 of liver disease due to drinking. He had always told me that if he was going to die, he wanted to die happy. We stayed on him all the time about his drinking and begged him to stop but he wouldn't.
He met my mother when I was 11 and they had been together ever since. I am now 26.
At first he was the enemy because it had been just me and my mom since I was 2. After a while I let my guard down and he stole my heart. My biological father never had anything to do with me so Dennis was the only father I ever knew. He had three children from a previous marriage and got custody of them so it was me, my mom , Dennis, Jackie, Phillip and Terry. He treated me as good, and sometimes better, than his own kids.
He and my mother finally married in July 1999. He started getting sick a couple of months later. They found out he had diabetes and put him on medicine. In January 2000, my mom had to take him to the emergency room and they put him in the hospital. He had been in there about three weeks when they told us that he only had 5% of his liver working.
They gave him only six months to live and told my mom he would be more at ease at home, so she took him home. He had nurses coming every day to help out for about a week then he got to the point where he couldn't walk, so they put him in a hospital bed at home.
He finally gave up and was in a coma within about a week. He died at about 1:00 am on the First of Feb 2000.
I will never be able to explain this feeling I carry with me all the time. I know he is with me.
I was in my kitchen one day and was thinking about him and I was crying. I turned around and my calendar was on the month of April. Well I had just looked up at it when it dropped pages. It was now on Feb!!!
I know it was him telling me he was there. I have also had my hair pulled as if someone was playing with me. I can feel someone looking over my shoulder when I am in the kitchen doing laundry or cooking.
I know that it's not much of a story but it's mine.