this entry is from December 22nd, 2008
my dad died the other day. i have to admit that it affected me more than i expected, though i knew it would happen someday, it wasn't supposed to happen this way. my heart hurts, this i know.
our father/daughter relationship had been severed. its been broken, complicated and painful.
i've wished for many years that we could have a relationship. i wished that we could heal our relationship. more than anything else, i wished and hoped and prayed that he knew that i loved him. to have to give up the hope of this is like taking a layer off of myself.
this is exposing a lot of who i am - my make-up. my dad is a part of my vocabulary. i tell a lot of funny stories about him, add him into conversation often, use him as an illustration. how he wore 70's short-shorts and tall striped tube socks when he played softball 20 years after short-shorts and tube socks fell out of fashion. how he only knew 2 jokes that didn't use curse words. how he used to smoke sweet pipe tobacco in his big brown easy chair and when he was away on business, i could sit in that chair and not feel so far away from him. and how i once told him that i couldn't continue our relationship in the way that it was currently existing and that i would always be waiting for him when he was ready to be my dad again. that time never came.
i will always wish things had been repaired. that he had been able to understand how much i cared about him. that i had never had to watch him walk away on that rainy day not knowing if he'd ever come back. but i'm thankful for the choice to remember him as the wonderful man that he was, not the man that he became. i can leave a legacy for him.
