A Memoir by Brittany Vick

I couldn’t get out of my dad’s beat-up white van fast enough. I got out of the car carrying my beloved soccer ball that I treated like a stuffed animal and ran across the parking lot to make it to the freshly cut soccer field that had my name written all over it. I could hear my dad screaming from the background, “Brittany, slow down and watch out for cars,” but I didn’t care. All I could see was the soccer field.

Soccer has been something I have loved to play ever since I was five years old in Patch Reef Park with my dad. Not only did I love soccer, but more importantly I loved the man who was teaching me how to play. I was truly “a daddy’s girl,” and this was a dream come true for me. We got onto the field where my dad proceeded to teach me how to dribble the ball. Upon seeing the confusion on my face, my dad quickly brought the ball to his feet and began dribbling around the field. He kicked the ball to me and told me it was my turn. I began to run aimlessly around the field with the soccer ball at my feet. It was a weird feeling and honestly I wasn’t that good.
That was my first experience with a soccer ball. Throughout the years, my dad continued to play ball with me in the back yard and come to all my games, cheering on the sidelines with his big Indiana Jones hat on that I was always so embarrassed of. He would always be yelling on the sidelines, encouraging me throughout the whole game. He was my number one fan, not just in soccer but in everything else in my life.
My dad liked to give advice, which I always welcomed. One game in particular we were driving to the field when my dad started blasting the song, “Rock ‘N Me” to get me pumped up. We would shout, “I went from Phoenix, Arizona all the way to Tacoma. Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.” And with all the adrenaline that we had just built up, it was time for my dad’s famous pre-game speech. “It’s time to dominate the field,” he told me. Short and to the point, dominate. This was a word that I had never heard of before but quickly came to be a major theme in my life. Even though the message was short, it took him much longer to explain what that meant. “You have to take control of the field and make your presence known,” he said.
I continued to think about that phrase in relation to different areas of my life: my schoolwork, soccer and running track. Not only did he tell me this, my dad modeled this behavior on a daily basis. He was of a hard worker in everything that he did. He was a chemical engineer who was probably too smart for his own good, he worked a full time job and he was a single dad who took on responsibilities for my sister and I that my mom never took initiative for. This was my dad, the man I wanted to be just like.
My dad was a very goal-oriented individual. It was so important for him to know that his two daughters had a plan for their lives. One Saturday when we were at his apartment he told us that we needed to draw a plan for our lives, and to design a map of how and when we wanted to accomplish our goals. This was another way for him to teach us how to “dominate” in every area of our lives. He would constantly remind us that we could do anything that we put our minds too, and I believed him. I thought that I could take on the world, at least with my dad behind me the whole way.
In seventh grade my dad had to move to Louisiana to find another engineering job. My life wasn’t the same. He wasn’t on the sidelines, at my track meets, or across the kitchen table helping me with my homework. At least he was still just a phone call away. Even though he couldn’t come to some very memorable moments in my awkward pre-teen years, he was always there, eager to hear how my day was.
After my freshman year of high school I decided to make my dreams come true because I got the opportunity to live with my dad. My sister and I moved to The Woodlands, Texas in Aug. 2003 and the first thing my dad did was take all of our trophies out of the box and set them up on his mantle. I remember reminiscing about awards I won such as “best female athlete,” in 8th grade. Because my dad didn’t get to experience it the first time, this was his opportunity to be there. After I began putting my trophies on the mantle, I said, “Dad, I finally learned what it felt like to actually dominate.” It was like I saw the fruit from all the values that my dad was trying to teach me, and I truly felt like I could do anything that I wanted to.
A month went by and I began to feel like I did before he moved away. I had my dad back. He was there again on the sidelines for my games and my practices as well. We would drive back from a night of soccer practice in my dad’s beige 1980 Ford F-150. My sister, dad, and I would all squeeze into the cab of the tiny truck as we discussed schoolwork or how I could improve my game. Life was everything it should be.
On Sept. 4, after a night of finally finishing my AP English homework, I told my dad that I was going to sleep. I went to sleep thinking everything was fine, but I woke up to my dad lying on the couch asking if I could call the doctor. He assured me that he was fine and shuffled my sister and I out the door to go to school. It wasn’t until later that day that I found out he had suffered from a severe heart attack all through the night. He was rushed to Methodist hospital in Houston where he would receive a quadruple bypass surgery. The doctors said that this had a very high survival rate so I wasn’t really worried.
After his surgery, he was put on a ventilator that prevented him from talking. We could only see him every couple of hours for 10 minutes at a time. My sister and I were always nervous to go in by ourselves, but one time his nurse encouraged us to. As we walked in, we saw our dad awake with his glasses on. We talked to him and told him not to worry because we had everything under control at home and assured him that he would be home soon.
Days turned into weeks of him being in the hospital on the ventilator. His heart was too weak to beat on its own, so my dad was put on the list to receive a heart transplant. We waited several more weeks until one day my youth minister came into hand bell practice to take my sister and I to the hospital for my dad to receive a new heart. ‘Sweet Matthew’ is what we called his new heart, and sweet is what it was. This was my dad’s chance at a new life.
Two days later on Oct. 16, 2003 my family was awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call. We rushed to the hospital, and arrived only to hear the worst news of my life: my dad’s organs began to shut down and it was only a matter of time before he would pass away. I went with my family around his bed where we said our goodbyes and watched as the nurses turned off the machines to see his heartbeat slowly diminish.
I saw the nurses put the blanket over his head and wheel him away forever out of my life. The situation was surreal to me at first. I was so angry with God. Why did he take the most important person away from me? I cried out for God to heal him, but he didn’t. Without my dad, I felt like I had nothing. He was everything to me, and now I had to learn how to have a life without him in it.
Even up until his last breath my dad showed me what it meant to persevere and to take control of my life. My dad fought the whole time, and would have continued to fight just so that he could stay with my sister and me. He fought through the pain, the loneliness, and the fear with a smile on his face the whole way through.
I never would have imagined that my dad would pass away, forcing me to take on the world without him. He might have left me physically, but my dad will always be with me, in all the values that he instilled within me. I will continue to dominate and persevere in all that I do, and think about how proud he would be to see me in college and on the school soccer team. I know that in heaven he is still on the sidelines wearing some goofy hat. He’s there for all my games and will be there at my graduation saying, “That’s my girl,” just like he did when he taught me to first dribble a soccer ball. And he’s right – I will always be his girl.