The gift

We were involved in a car accident a few weeks ago. Thankfully no one was hurt but our van was totaled. I was given the task to clean out the van prior to it being towed away by our insurance company. I quickly stored everything in a few big bags and threw them in the garage.

Last night Bud asked me for something and I realized that it was probably in those bags. Reluctantly I headed to the garage and began to sort through the bags. I stumbled upon a CD of pictures. I have no clue where they were in the van or why they were there. I came upstairs and put the CD in the computer never expecting it to work.

It did work!

And when the pictures opened there were pictures of a beach trip that we took with my dad, my stepmom, mother-in-law and a few friends in 2001.

I cried when I came on the first picture of my dad holding Abby as a baby.

I felt like I could almost reach through the screen and touch both of them. And for that moment, I was in the moment. I heard the laughter as our family sat around the pool talking that day. I heard my Dad humming to my daughter and her sweet little face lighting up. And I wanted so badly to be back in that moment again. To be back before our family knew pain, before life got hard and difficult and before we knew the pain of loss.

I am so grateful to have found these pictures, to remind me of that vacation, of that time in our life, of what my dad looked like when he was whole and healthy, of what my sweet girl looked like with her chubby little cheeks and her sweet curls on top of her head. And I am thankful for gifts from God because this is what this was to me in a very rough week. A gift.

Father's Day

Reminders all around me. Displays at the store, songs on the radio. Reminders everywhere.

Today is Father's Day. The day we celebrate Father's and what they mean to us. It's been 3 years since I celebrated Father's Day really. Sure, I buy Bud a card and I plan a gift and a meal but my heart isn't really in it. I want my father, my daddy. I want the person who made the skinned knees okay, who taught me to drive, who danced with me at my wedding, who cradled his first granddaughter with such love in his eyes, who wiped the tears away when I cried by his bedside at the hospital when he was sick. I don't want to wish anyone else a Happy Father's Day because my father isn't here and it isn't fair.

My parents divorced when I was three. My dad didn't have the best role model in a father but somehow he did it so well. He never said an unkind word ever about my mother after their divorce, he picked me up faithfully every weekend to spend time with him even when I am sure he was tired and would have rather rested, he paid child support even when he was on strike and had to borrow the money from my grandmother, he would bring lunch to me even after working night shift the night before because I forgot my lunch, he had a way of making you thing that everything was going to be okay, he always believed the best in me and told me I could do anything or be anyone.

For my birthday this year my mom had our old home movies converted and I got to see my daddy again. My daddy like I remembered him. Young and handsome and strong. I watched him hold a little me and watched a little me kiss him and I wanted to be there again in that moment. Content that everything in life was going to be okay because my daddy was there.

I miss you so much Dad and I love you. Please meet me in my dreams tonight and walk beside me and let me hear your voice again.

Missing

Missing my Dad this evening and wishing that I could talk to him on the phone just one more time. What I wouldn't give to hear his voice one more time say "Hi Kath, or Love you" or "tell Abby Maddie and Destiny we love them."

My dad wasn't a superhero, maybe nothing special to the rest of the world but in my eyes he hung the moon and stars. He never had an unkind word to say about anyone, he never felt that he had to be the center of attention, he went to work at his blue collar job and gave it his all every day, most of all he made me feel secure and loved.

I hate that his granddaughters will never know truly how much he loved them.

Maddie Grace and Grandpa

Grief

is a funny thing. It can come out of nowhere when you are having an otherwise good day and blindside you. It is triggered by a word, a conversation, an action.

Our medical assistant in the clinic offered me half a piece of gum the other day and that action nearly brought me to tears. My dad never chewed a whole piece of gum-ever. He would rip each piece in half and sometimes even quarters and chew it. He hated giving me a whole piece of gum, to him that was a waste. My sense of loss is greatest when I pick up the phone and see the caller ID with his name but know that it isn't him on the other end.

Grief is tempered by time but it doesn't ever really go away. Some days it is less and other days more. Some days I can distinctly recall every moment in agonizing detail of my mother-in-law's last evening. I suppose I will always feels some sense of responsibility, maybe if I had done something differently she would be here with us. Rationally I know better but ration doesn't always prevail. My sense of loss for my mother-in-law is greatest when I watch the girls at their activities and I know how much she would have enjoyed being there cheering (okay screaming) for them.

Finally, I think of the friends I have lost. It doesn't seem right to write that I have lost friends because they were far too young. Scott was my friend. Also my first "real" boyfriend, the one I served detention with for kissing him in our Christian school hallway. We remained good friends following graduation and forever he will hold a special place in my heart. The last conversation I had with him before he passed away was when he was visiting in Pennsylvania from South Carolina. We hung out for the day with a bunch of friends and that evening as I went to say goodbye to him he hugged me and said, "You know I love you, don't you?" I told him that I loved him too. I will always be grateful that I had that conversation with him. Losing him was unexpected and it was that moment when a young person (me) realized for the first time that they were not invincible. I have thought of him so often over the years, wondered what he would be like now. Would he be married, have kids? The one thing I have always carried with me since then is to cherish your friends. Love them, enjoy them and never let an opportunity to pass to tell them how much they mean to you.

Heather was my irreverent friend from ninth and tenth grade. She would laugh at things that no one else found funny. She delighted in making me blush. She saved me from being too serious. She died a few months ago of undiagnosed MS to the brain. Her precious daughter, Molly is a year older than Abigail and I can remember just how Heather looked with Molly perched on her hip nine years ago. She delighted in being a mom and a wife. Several times I have sat down to write Molly and her brother, Ian, a letter about their mom since they will never know what she was like during those high school years. So far each attempt has caused more tears than writing and so it is not yet finished.

Trisha was a nursing instructor with me in Ohio. We became close friends when we were clinical instructors for senior nursing students. We ate lunch together every Thursday and Friday and became fast friends. She amazed me with her knowledge of the heart. She had literally put herself through school while working full-time. She got her RN first, then her BSN and finally her NP. After we left Ohio, we kept in touch and she came to see us the summer after we moved to Atlanta. We had a great time visiting Olympic Park and the CNN center and just talking and laughing. Less than a year later and two months after she finished getting her NP, she was killed in a car accident with her six year old niece, Abbey. I still keep her emails in my inbox to read because they were always so positive and encouraging.

As painful as my losses have been and as never ending as the grief has seemed at times, I would never have wanted to not know them, to not have them be a part of my life. What is the saying?, "it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all."

Smiling through the Tears

We are currently on a vacation. A family vacation, an extended family vacation. I am not ready to write about the whole vacation but this evening highlighted to me how one event can be so joyous and also bittersweet at the same time.

Today we went to the Magic Kingdom. As I sat on the ferry ride over, I couldn't help but think of all the times I had been to Disney with my family and sat on that same ferry. My eyes fell on my husband who had my youngest daughter's hand in his and I could almost feel the sensation of my hand in my dad's, that timeless connection between father and daughter repeated over again in my husband and daughter.

As I stood with my excited children (and husband) in line to drive the cars on the Motor Speedway, I remembered a hot August night when I was 12 and my stepbrother was 11. My dad and stepmom gave us 10.00 and told us to meet them back at the main gates of the park at midnight. I shudder now as a mother but times were different then. Eric and I had the best time that night riding our favorite rides over and over again with no parent telling us that we had to move on now. We laugh about it now, a shared memory.

Finally, I stood in the crowds of people tonight waiting for the fireworks to begin and I remembered my very first visit to Disney with my mom. I was only about five years old and I stood on Main Street staring at the beautiful castle and watching the fireworks explode overhead and thought that this truly was a magical place. Tonight I got to see that same expression in the girl's eyes as Cinderella's Castle changed colors and the fireworks burst into color in the background.

And then I heard the tears and I turned even though I knew who was crying and why she was crying. Abby managed to choke out, "I miss my Gen-Gen." Always in these truly beautiful breathtaking moments that she is truly enjoying, it is as if she knows how much her Gen-Gen would have enjoyed being there and watching how much the girls were enjoying themselves. I heard her Daddy say, "I miss her too" with a choked voice and he wrapped his arms around her.

The tears fell from my eyes then as the enormity of the loss of my dad hit me again. How I wish he could have been standing next to me tonight. Seeing that what he poured into me as a father has shaped me as a mother. That the dad that he was to me is the dad that I will always encourage Bud to be in his girls lives.

I scooped up Maddie and she laid her cheek next to mine and then pulled back and wiped her hand over my tears and said, "You miss your Daddy, don't you?" How intuitive she always is. She kissed my cheek and said, "Don't cry Mama. Aren't the fireworks beautiful?" And she was right. It would have been so easy to miss the beauty and the joy of the moment for the pain.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" Dr. Seuss

One of those days

You ever have one of those days where you just feel overwhelmed and alone. This isn't one of those days, it's one of those weeks. I have a few things going on that at the moment seem insurmountable to me. My heart is heavy and quite honestly, I am just sad. I miss my dad this week more than words can say. The other night I was driving and I thought back to the time in the hospital when he wasn't talking yet and I sat there just crying and he reached over gently and rubbed my tear away and patted my face. I miss the comfort that he gave. I miss him.

And yet in the midst of feeling overwhelmed and alone, I remember that I am not ever really alone. That the road is not an easy one all of the time. Life is not a destination but a journey. And what is to come if far better than anything than I could ever imagine. And so I press on.

Sad

I am sad tonight.   Sad because I realize how much my little girls are growing up and becoming big girls.   It seems like just yesterday that Bud and I were the parents of small children, now we are the parents of school age children.   Somedays I just want to stop the world and savor them a little bit longer.   

For my birthday my stepmother sent me an album filled with pictures of my dad and I and my dad with various members of our family.  It was such a sweet present.   I turned one page and the picture literally took my breath away.  It was my dad sitting on a chair in his swim trunks and t-shirt holding Abby in her sweet little swimsuit drinking a bottle.   In a heartbeat, I was there in that moment.  Feeling the warm Florida sunshine and laughing with my family and watching my dad hold my daughter and feeling such joy.   In the next instant, I heard her voice call "Mama" and turned to see her eight year old sassy self come swinging around the corner and I realized that my dad wasn't here to see the young lady that she is becoming.   And that was such a sad, sad feeling.   

Abby and Grandpa in 2005

Tonight we went rollerskating and when we got home it was the usual dash to get everything done.   I got the kids in bed and hurried to make lunches and sweep the kitchen floor and do a load of laundry and........ the list goes on and one.  Abby called me once and then again and I went in there and was so impatient with her that she disturbed me while I was trying to finish something and and she said oh so sweetly, "I'm sorry Mama, go back and do whatever you have to do."  I realized at that moment that nothing was sweeter than snuggling with my little girl and that all too soon she will be grown and leaving me and I need to savor every moment.   

Abby in 2001

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 71 years old today. It is hard sometimes for me to comprehend that I can't pick up the phone and just call him and say hi or that I will never hear him say again, "I love you, tell Abby, Maddie and Destiny that I love them and tell Bud hi," his standard end to every phone call.

I know though that he wouldn't want me to be sad. He always lived in the day and in the moment- content right where he was. So, today I won't be sad. I am going on his youngest granddaughter's Kindergarten field trip to the zoo which he would have enjoyed immensely. I will spend the afternoon with the girls and go get ice cream (which he loved!) and I will remember him and smile.

One more day

Tonight is rough.  The house is quiet.  Bud and the girls are all in bed and I am up finishing some last minute work before tomorrow and the song "One More Day" by Lonestar came on.  And the wave of sadness hit me all over again.

Last night I had a crazy dream

Wish was granted just for me,

It could be for anything

I didn't ask for money, or a mansion in Malibu

I simply wished for one more day with you

One more day, One more time

One more sunset maybe I'd be satisfied 

But then again; I know what I would do

Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you

I think about the moment that I kissed him goodbye fully expecting to see him in less than a week after I brought the girls back home to Atlanta.  I didn't stay long.  His room was full of visitors but I kissed him and I hugged him and at the last moment I leaned back in and whispered "You are the best dad ever".  I miss him so much and I would give anything for one more day.  

I love you Dad!

My dad's arms

This past year has been a difficult one for me as I have struggled with the loss of my dad. My dad and I were close. I could talk to him about so many things and he would just listen. He loved me with all of my shortcomings and faults. Even when he was dying from melanoma he was so proud that his hospice nurse told him that I really knew my stuff. His face lit up when she said that. How awesome it feels to rest in your parent's approval and pride. I have been missing him so much and have been worried because some days I can't seem to remember my dad as he was when he was well, only sick.

The other day I was walking back into my work building after having lunch with my co-workers and walking toward me was one of my favorite patients. He beamed at me and then told me that he had missed me. I reached over to rub on his arm and then realized that his arms looked just like my dad's did when he was healthy. They were tan with light hair and freckles. In that moment I could see him again, healthy and happy and smiling at me. Mr. F. probably has no idea why his hug was extra long when I left him. I choose to look at these things as small gifts from my dad to me. A balm for my heart.

Remembering my Dad

I was offered a new position yesterday at the hospital. It would be more money and an increased set of responsibilites but it would move me away from oncology which has always been my first love. I felt so unsettled this morning as I stood in the shower and thought about whether I should take the position or not. I talked to Bud about it last night and my mom, my good friends Heather and Cindy but something felt missing. I realized what it was. I have never made a major decision in my life without talking to my Dad about it. He was always my sounding board for problems or concerns. He was great at it because he never felt the need to tell me what to do or what he would do, he would just let me talk it out and then reassure me that he knew that I would make the right decision. I miss him so much. It broke my heart to hear Maddie say something about Grandpa this morning knowing that she was talking about her Opa (Bud's dad). I gently reminded her that she was talking about Opa and she told Abby's little friend that was over "My Mama's daddy died and she really misses him." I would love just one more opportunity to wrap my arms around him and tell him how much I love him and what a great dad he always was.

Maddie and Grandpa right after his accident in July of 2005

Maddie and Grandpa in July of 2007.