Hey there, everyone. I'm Melony Ann. I'm here because I don't know where else to be or what else to do.

Our dad has passed.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you that he wasn't the best dad. My brothers would agree. So would all of his exes. With just us kids, there was a lot of physical, emotional, and mental abuse. We all have our own trauma from him and what he put us through throughout our lives. At one point in our lives, we all decided the best thing for us was to remove him from our lives for our own mental health. I was the last one to do that because I'm the oldest. I felt like my responsibility was to take care of everyone, including him.

Our dad had extensive mental health issues. He was bipolar, paranoid, and delusional. He was an undiagnosed schizophrenic. I truly believe that a lot of the problems we've all had are caused so much by those issues. I believe the rest are caused by how he himself grew up. He was so horrendously messed up by his own father. He was abused on so many different levels. That kind of abuse takes a huge toll on anyone who comes in contact with it.

During it all, I was the one who stuck by him. I was the one who had a restraining order filed against her because he had it in his head that my help was me working with the police to unalive him. I was the one who dealt with every single one of his outbursts when things didn't go his way, as if they were somehow my fault. I didn't give up. I just kept going. I pretended like nothing happened. Things got okay again with him. And then he'd turn on me again because of something going on in his life, loss of his car, or an eviction from his home. It all became my fault. I persevered because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I couldn't anymore. I remained the person who could be contacted in the event decisions about his life needed to be made if he couldn't make them, but beyond that, I had, like my siblings, moved on with my life away from him.

Over the past few years, he ended up with some physical problems on top of the mental ones. He had thyroid issues. He had cholesterol and blood pressure issues. He made the decision long ago that nothing is wrong with him, so while he'd been in and out of 72-hour psych holds for years, he still refused to take his mental health medications. This, of course, caused that to worsen to the point where he was convinced that all other medications he was on for his physical health were given to him to try and unalive him. He stopped taking all of those as well.

Because of this, and from what we know, he has had at least two strokes, greatly exacerbated by not taking his medications. Was it the full cause? We don't know. But it was a cause. This last one, his third one, was what did him in. He lost all function on his right side, including the ability to swallow. He got pneumonia because his saliva was going into his lungs. They treated it, but it was just going to keep happening. He had no brain activity in the left side of his brain. His tissue was dead. He couldn't speak. The right side of his brain was dying. He couldn't move. He couldn't go to the bathroom. He couldn't stand. He didn't want to live like that. It was his wish to be let go in the event he no longer had brain activity or bodily autonomy. He didn't have either of them. He would have needed 24/7 care. He couldn't even tolerate a feeding tube. He had no nutrition going into his stomach. He would've continued to get pneumonia. It would've been painful, and he would've been locked in his own mind in agony because he couldn't talk.

So, per his wishes, the decision to put him in hospice and let him go was made. We wanted him to be comfortable. We wanted him to go in peace. Peace he has never felt in his entire existence.

At 2:20 a.m. Sunday morning, September 27, 2026, our dad passed away peacefully. He was not in pain. For the first time in his life, he felt that peace we had wished for him. Peace we had wanted for him for so many years.

He burned a lot of bridges with a lot of people, but that doesn't mean we don't want him to go out without any dignity.

And... that's where we are. Our dad didn't have life insurance. He didn't do anything to pay for any kind of end-of-life celebrations. He didn't have a lot of money to do things like that with anyway. As it stands, the family doesn't have the funds to help. We don't want my dad sitting there on a cold slab for 6 months while we try to save enough money to give him a proper goodbye. We just don't believe that a soul can truly rest if their body isn't put to rest as well.

Our dad put everyone through so much. He put me through so much, but we still want him to go with dignity and peace. We want his soul to rest. He's never felt peace. He's never been able to truly rest. That's all we want for him.

So, with a heavy heart, we're doing something we never thought we'd see ourselves doing. We're begging for help from the community, from you, from strangers and friends alike, to please help us put our dad to rest and give him his final peace.

Love you all, and thank you all so much for anything you can do,

Melony Ann

Derek

Wayne