This is a truth that I have learned to live with. I discovered this fact about three years ago. Accepting this fact has helped with better cope with the ups and especially downs of life. .
It feels like it was just yesterday, I can still hear myself knocking on the door asking Jill, my oldest sister, what was wrong. She was sobbing on the other side of the door. So, with great concern, I called her best friend, Tina, and received the tragic news from her mother, Eric had died. Eric was one of my sister's best friends. .
Eric's father had died when he was only nine-years-old. This left Eric growing up with a brother, a sister, and only one parent. Although Eric's mother was a very loving person she suffered a great deal from the death of her husband. And soon after began drinking. A lot. This set them back immensely, financially. .
I knew that Eric had suffered from heart problems, but even he did not know just how serious they were. Due to his family's money situation, Eric had no health insurance and therefore never went to the hospital to get his heart examined. This is probably the reaction you are going to get from any twenty-year-old. Until about six months before his death, he was down the shore and his chest had been bothering him a great deal. My sister, who at the time was in school to become an RN (Registered Nurse), urged him to go to the hospital. He agreed and discovered that he had suffered a minor heart attack. This scared Eric.
For the next couple of months, Eric was doing better. He was cautious of what he was eating, and was trying to exercise more frequently to help his heart get healthy. Sadly this did not last very long. Eric went back to his old bad habits.
A couple of months later, one December morning, one of Eric's friends went to his apartment to wake him up for work and found him lying dead on his couch. He was taken to the hospital, but it was just too late. There was no hope.
