Just this morning you left peacefully in your sleep. I felt a rush of numbness when I read the news from Amy, then talked Lisa and cried. She made me feel better like only a big sister can. I am grateful for the on-line communication we had and phone conversations in recent months. I wrote a letter 6 days ago I never posted........
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Saturday, October 5, 2013
Dear Dad,
I never stopped wondering about you growing up. I tried to
imagine what it would be like to see you every day. I imagined the sports we
would play together and created an image in my mind that has never left me. I daydreamed
of this image often when bored at school or alone in my room wishing you were
the one sitting in the living room. I always felt a part of me was missing;
distant and incomplete. You were that part of me. Unknown. Unreachable.
I remembered that image I created as a girl last night clear
as day. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I remember it and I want to paint it for
you with my words.
We are standing in a field on a slightly breezy day. We are
playing catch, but I cannot see the type of ball we are using. Is it a
baseball? Football? Tennis ball? There are no other items around us or in our
hands and the kind of ball doesn’t matter. It’s just me and you and we are
smiling. There is a soft golden glow and there are tall stalks of yellow grass
waving in the soft wind around us. I am very young, maybe 5 years old, and I am
wearing an old fashioned dress that also flies gently in the breeze along with
my hair. I see no trees around and we are both so happy and carefree. You are
also young maybe in your 20s with a genuine smile. It’s such a safe place; happy and endless in
time.
When I went to see you for the first time that my memory
can recall, I was 17. You told me you always loved me and missed me terribly.
I believed you. I felt it when you said it. You told me a song always made you
think of us by Eric Clapton called ‘Tears in Heaven’. You wondered if we would know you if we saw you in heaven.
With your health declining and the end of your time on earth
approaching faster than any of us would like, I just know it’s going to be like
my image when I see you next. We will get to make up for lost time. Time will
be endless and we will be smiling. And playing catch, apparently. 