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Nobody ever tells you what you should do when you see your hero cry.

As a seven year old girl, coming home from school, I expected to be greeted with smiles.

Instead I found my father on the couch, with his head in his hands. 

I tried to run up to him but my mother stopped me. 

All seven years of innocence had me looking up at him "daddy, what's wrong?"

He looked down at me with tear soaked eyes and calmly responded "your sister might die."

Seven years old with an 11 year gap put my older sister at 18.

The age where she should have been just following her dream.

Instead, my dad found himself braced with the idea that his first child would undergo her second heart surgery.

When we were young, my mother always told us that you couldn't love someone a half, you could only love them a whole or not at all.

So my sister may not have lived with us, and we may have struggled so my father could pay her mother,

But she was still my sister, and no seven year old should have to worry about their sister undergoing heart surgery for a second time.

Nobody ever warns you what it's like to see your hero cry.

to feel your heart collapse as you stare back at them, because you have no words.

My sister made it out of her surgery just fine, but she will never know what it was like, the day I saw my father cry.