The sun had risen early that day, and never before or again have I seen brighter red and yellow leaves. However, the light of dawn through opened blinds seemed dark and gray to me. It was a contradiction I never understood, until now. I saw death far more easily than I saw life. Falling leaves stood out to me, slowly leaving their homes on trees. Dying. All of them dying.

The only thing I could do was lie in the couch-bed, curled on my side with heavy blankets wrapped around me for the hollow comfort they gave. I watched the dark sun rise and listened to the wheezed, labored breathing of my father as he died. Even after all that time I still had tears left to bawl in silent pain as my mother wept by his bed nearby.

We had each taken turns, my mother, sister and I, staying awake at different hours in the night. After all that fighting, all that pain and promises for more time, I lay there in unblinking darkness doing nothing but listening. And I listened. And I listened. And I listened...

“Get your sister,” my mother had whispered.

As I sat up the blankets fell from me like a shell. My mother looked over her shoulder and her pale blue stare told me everything.

So I ran.

The fall season in northern Utah is as cold as a winter anywhere else. But while my bare feet tramped across the frozen marble tile at the base of the stairs, I didn’t notice it. I had been cold for a year.

My sister, Emily, left her warm shower and hurried with me back down the stairs with soaked hair and her winter robe pulled tight around her waist. She ran to the right side of my father’s bed and took his hand with hers. My mom sat on the couch armrest by the top of his bed and stroked his bald scalp and yellowed cheeks.

But I knelt on his left side, reached through the cold silver bars and gripped his hand with both of mine. I pressed my face against the icy metal on the sides of his bed while the tears fell like the silence of my hope.

I remembered everything. It was like I was the one dying, my brain showing me everything I would leave behind: the car rides to and from school where we became so caught up in conversation my dad would miss a turn, or the times when I was younger and played with dolls at his feet while he watched the news, read newspapers and ate candy. He was my best friend. I held his hand tighter, determined to hang on. Maybe if I held him hard enough, I could anchor him here forever.

But then I thought of how whenever I kissed my parents goodnight, he would reach out to me again just before I left for bed and we would grip hands goodbye. For years, every night we had. It was our thing. Then I realized that I was gripping his hand while he slept in a dying coma. I held his hand for that final goodbye. It struck me, and I sobbed through bitten lips. His hand blurred with tears and I prayed for him to breathe just one more time. Just one more time, please.

His ragged gasps grew further apart. I held my breath with him until his chest rose heavily again and air rattled through his dry lips. One more time...one more time, please.

He didn’t. That one more stopped coming.

My little family sat there, frozen and crying in the quiet. I could have stayed there for years, because I didn’t want to let go. If I let his hand go, I would never be able to hold it to say goodbye again. This was the last goodbye. I couldn’t stand it. I bawled and sobbed and held his hand for dear life. Vainly, foolishly, I prayed for him to breathe one more time, please.

Of course that miracle was not for me. I watched while phone calls were made, people came to take his body away and more phone calls were made. All morning I sat upstairs on my sister’s hope chest, looking out of the back door to the ocean of leaves on the patio. The wind had died too, none of the leaves were moving.

I remembered his booming laugh and his world-rocking sneezes. I remembered his bear hugs and getting him massive bowls of ice cream every evening after dinner. I remembered things he said and advice he gave. I remembered the letters I came across on his computer one day. Each was for one member in our little family. They were his goodbyes and his last “I love you.”

I remembered walking by his room and seeing my dad on his knees, hands pressed together in a mighty fist as he begged with God for more time, for a miracle--I don’t know. I remembered hearing my mom tell me he had less than six months, that he fought a lost battle with his cancer...

And then I stopped remembering.

After the funeral and after my mom’s suicidal depression, I know one thing. I’m still here. My family is still here. Somehow between God and friends we made it.

I did not understand how much I could love, or how much I would do, for my family until then. I slowly began to understand it after I saw an empty place-setting at the table. I understood it when I saw tasks my dad did, were no longer done. I turned the news on before dinner and stopped fighting over the little things. I understood it when I held my mom’s hand, stroked her hair and listened to her cry when she came home from work. I understood it when I let my sister yell at me because she wouldn’t bring herself to yell at our mom for what was happening to us.

Through the darkness, I understood who I was and what my family really is. They weren’t just the people that I lived with, they became my friends who listened to me sob without saying a word or took me someplace other than home just to get me to smile. They were the ones who stayed with me, comforted me, and who understood what was happening.

Slowly I began to see how much my family at home was still my family at heart. They didn’t die with my father. I realized this when my mom loved Emily and I enough to stay with us one day at a time. Then slowly, day-by-day, she got better.

Three years later, wounds still are sore--they at least stopped bleeding. That I understand, as I sat on my sister’s hope chest in her room at our new house. Unpacked boxes scattered throughout the one story home, and the summer heat melted through the bare windows onto my face as I stared into the front yard. My mom and sister laughed at something in the next room, hanging new pictures on one of the walls.

With each fall of the hammer, tears picked their way down my cheeks and I smiled.

Pound.

It was the day of moving on.

Pound.

It was the day of starting over.

Pound.

I wiped the trails of tears off my face and got to my feet, taking one last look outside before finding a box to unpack. My grin took in the bright blue sky, cloudless in a haze of simmering yellow beams from the sun. I remembered again. My dad’s favorite color was blue, like the sky and my mother’s eyes.

The tree leaves just beyond the window twisted softly on their branches, shaking hands with the wind. Alive. Strong.

Until that moment, never had I seen leaves so green.