Dad

The truth is that I miss you Dad.

For as long as I am alive I will miss you. I don't think of you every day anymore, but I do think of you often. When one of my many "days" rolls around I remember that you aren't here to commemorate it and in fact, you have been one of my "days" for fourteen years now.

There's so much you haven't been here for and seven years from today you will have been gone from my life for as long as your earthly body was in it. I have so many memories with you, but as the years have passed I have experienced more without you and for a few of those years I hated you for it. I said goodbye to you only months after my 21st birthday and only a year after I'd almost died in my wreck. Things had only begun scratching the surface of normalcy for me when you got sick, and you were dead a few weeks later.

It hurts. The part of my heart where you are aches from all the ways I've missed you and from all the things we've missed out on. You didn't see me (finally) finish college. You weren't able to rejoice with your daughter the day she married the love of her life. You weren't there when I hit my bottom and decided that I had to pick myself up from it. You weren't there for my fight in Louisville. You weren't sitting beside me the first time I got to go to a Vikings game in Minnesota. You never met Erica. We can't talk about how different life is for me today and you won't meet the children we hope to someday have.

There are some things I am glad you weren't here to witness, such as my arrest and subsequent 5 day stay in the county jail or the behaviors that led me to being fired from three jobs in the span of 6 years. You weren't around either time I had to move back into your house to find shelter from the messes I'd made. You didn't have to live through the loss of your Mary Sunshine and for that I am grateful.

I'll always treasure the time we had together and I hope someday I can fully reconcile all the time we've spent apart. Until then you are always with me in my heart.

I miss you, Dad.