Goodbyes Are Always Hard
17 June, 2006
Sierra Tinglin

 

      Shelly Bowers has been saying good-bye to people all her life. She lost her aunt, grandparents and father at a very young age. Now, she had to say good-bye to her two youngest children, Meghan and Matt, when they left for Alaska. “I will be lonely when they leave. We are a family and we have been together everyday.”
     In recent months, the Bowers family has gone through another rough good-bye. Meghan and Matt recently lost their father, Dave, unexpectedly. Even though Shelly and Dave were divorced, Shelly took Dave’s death hard. She feels sorry for her children because they now have to live the rest of their lives without a father. “At my nephew’s graduation, my son leaned in and said ‘I just realized that my dad won’t be at my graduation.’ The only thing I could say was ‘No Matt, he won’t, but I will.’ It brought tears to my eyes to hear my son say that,” Shelly said sadly. To see her children feel so hurt broke her heart. Shelly remembers the day she had to tell her children that their father had just been found dead in his home. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell them that their father had died, but I knew I had to.”
     Although Dave had problems, he always tried to be the best father he could be to Meghan and Matt. Dave was a drug user and an alcoholic, and his drinking often lead to violence. Shelly and Dave were constantly fighting about the well being of Matt and Meghan. It was very rare to see them getting along. Even though Shelly didn’t get along with Dave, she could see that he was trying to be a good dad. “Dave had a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol, but that never stopped him from being their father. He would always try to hide his problem from the kids and I respected him for that, but eventually my kids saw everything for themselves.”
     Shelly wishes Dave were here to see how his children have grown into wonderful people and to see what changes they are going to make as adults. The only thing Shelly wishes that her children didn’t have to experience was seeing their father abuse drugs and alcohol. “I don’t want my children to remember Dave as an alcoholic or a drug user, but I want them to remember him as their father. The man who stayed up with them when they were sick and the man who would put band-aids on their scraped knee. That’s how I want everyone to remember Dave, as a hero and a father.

<<Return to Interviews