It's been so long since I've written or posted on here; I didn't know how to come back. Or whether to come back, quite frankly. My mind was made up about that pretty quickly when I realized that with Asher's birthday coming up this weekend, I need to write him his birthday letter like I do every year. This blog has been such an outlet for me to capture our family's little life, including my annual letter to the boys on their birthday's. I would be sad to not have a way to look back on our memories, even if no one ever reads this but Greg and I.
So in coming back I must say that nothing in my life has changed, yet everything has changed at the exact same time.
If you stood on the outside looking in, you would see the same girl, doing the same daily activities, in the same regular routine of things. Everything would look pretty much like it always has. A small house, 2 busy boys on the inside, a Mama trying her best to build them up and help them become responsible and loving young men. A couple working to foster a healthy marriage.
But if you looked inside my heart you would see that everything has changed, and that is because my father passed away on March 13 of this year. At 51 years old, he was too young to die. Damn cancer.
I was able to be there for some of his last moments, and while they were so hard, they were so beautiful. My father knew I was there, he squeezed his hand to tell me he loved me. He opened his eyes briefly. My step-mother, step-brother, my father's minister and I prayed for my dad, sang for my dad in some of his last hours on this earth. I spent hours by his bedside, and watched as the man who was my father, drifted slowly, slowly away.
He left this world very early in the morning, just a few hours after I had left the hospital to crawl into bed with 2 of my 3 boys.
Grief struck. The sting of it was painful. I somehow stood for hours in a receiving line at his wake. Walked down the aisle of the church at his funeral. Covered his casket with a white blanket. Watched as his body was driven away. Was forced to say my final good-bye. Cried so hard I couldn't see. Couldn't breath.
I'm sad I don't have a father anymore. I'm sad out of the blue when I think that I can't pick up the phone and call him. I'm sad for a holiday to pass by and not make a card for him with Asher. But I'm also sad for the relationship that we never had. For the relationship my boys will never have.
Growing up away from him was very tough on me. The lack of his presence in my life affected me in deep and profound ways, ways that led me to counseling on more than one occasion. But he and I, we made peace with that after a letter and an honest talk years ago, when I was pregnant for Asher. We had moved on, and were getting to know each other in a new way these past years. It was wonderful, and I felt that the pain from the lack of his presence in my life subsided. I had comfort in my heart.
And now he's gone. A part of me is grieving the chance to have the relationship with my father that I only got a taste of. I find myself wrestling with old questions that I wish I could ask him again. And the pain from the lack of his presence in my life has swept back in. Only this time it's permanent.
But in the midst of this turmoil and sadness, there is joy as well. A newfound closeness with my step-mother and step-brother. The immense out pouring of love from my family and friends. Meaningful words from my mother. Healing. Hope. A knowingness that my father is in a better place, that my father loved me.
The connectedness that I have with my father even still, even after life has finished for him, was never more evident to me than the first moment I looked in his casket. There placed next to his head were two roses, the names of each of my boys, his only grandchildren, pinned to a rose. This man, even though we didn't always look like the typical father-daughter duo, was my father. He gave life to me, and in turn, I gave life to Asher and Levi. This invisible thread of connectedness between us all was so clear to me, and it struck a note in my soul.
I have my life because this man once lived.
I have my loves because this man once loved.
I have my family because this man was family.
I have such comfort in looking at this photo, taken the last time my boys saw "Pops" as he liked to be called, on his 51st birthday. Four generations together for the last time.
"Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art"
Love you, dad.
