Danielle, class of 2011
University of Delaware

I lost my dad to brain cancer April 7th, 2009. At 6am, I woke to a call from my mom, saying my dad didn’t make it. The three months preceding that phone call were a whirlwind of doctors’ appointments, specialists and struggle. It was New Years Day when my dad was rushed to the emergency room for what we thought, at the time, was a stroke. I remember one of the older EMTs that had met us at the hospital tell me that now was the time I needed to be strong, like he knew something I didn’t know yet. Though my dad lost a lot of his functioning, communication, and cognitive skills, throughout all the surgeries and radiation treatments, he kept assuring us that he was fine and things were gonna be okay. Through everything, he was always the one telling us, “things are gonna be okay.”

I think one of the most difficult things for me to deal with through this whole time was being in college and coping with what was going on at home. My dad wanted me to stay in school, so I made the 4-hour round trip commute each weekend, and sometimes in the middle of the week after receiving phone calls telling me I might want to come home and say goodbye, ‘cause this time might be it. I didn’t take a single exam that semester on the date that it was scheduled and for a whole month I didn’t sleep more than 4 hours a night. For such a young age, I had come to know far too many grown experiences and began to feel alone and isolated in my grief. I was on a campus surrounded by 20,000 other students who I was sure couldn’t begin to grasp what I was dealing with. It wasn’t until my dad passed away and I began talking to the people around that I started to realize that might not be the case. I found that so many other students had had experiences like mine. They came to me and comforted me, told me it was gonna be hard, but I’d get through, that they sometimes still struggle. These students, my peers, my friends, they too had had these very adult experiences much sooner than anyone should have to. They too knew what loss meant.

I immediately wanted to be there for them the way they had been there for me. But more than that, I wanted to let them know about a secret I was beginning to learn. We are not alone in this. I had heard of Students of AMF through a Georgetown student and wondered why we didn’t have something like this on our campus. I talked to Dave, who was so incredible and helpful. With the help of some really amazing friends, University of Delaware got its own chapter of Students of AMF. Students of AMF gave me the chance to see joy in the pain and come out on the other side of tragedy, knowing everything’s going to be okay.