Still Numb After All These Years

Friday is the eleven year anniversary of my father's death.

Cancer doesn't know about daddies, or moms, or brothers and sisters, or grandmothers, or uncles, or cats or dogs. Cancer knows life, and it will stop at nothing to destroy it.

I watched for two years as my father slowly wasted away, and eventually died right before my eyes. I felt his hand soften in mine and go limp; his hands that held me high in the air, that tossed baseballs for me, that sewed patches to my girl scout vest.

I often wonder what our lives would be like today if he had never died, if he had never been sick. So much of my life and my mother's life and my sister's life is a response to his sickness and death.

I can't help but feel like I'm always missing something. I miss the man who told his seven year old daughter fart jokes, who lifted me up so I could dunk a basketball, who danced with me on his feet in the kitchen, who held my mother close and wished he never had to let go. He didn't want to have to let go. He loved life so so so much and he had the world to live for. I've come to terms with it over the last eleven years in my own way, in the smiles of his grandchildren, whenever the leaves rustle on a breezy day, when the air is still and the world is quiet, when someone's eyes say "I love you," when my hand feels warm on a cold winter day, and I know my daddy is there with me.

But I wish he could see us now, see how far we've come, see how much we love life even in his long absense. I know that he sees us, but I wish he were here experiencing this amazing life with us.

It doesn't get easier, it never gets easier. There are dozens of things I wish I could tell him, tons of things I want him to say to me. I wish I could see him hold his grandchildren. I wish he could hold my mother's hand one more time. I wish I could dance on his feet in the kitchen again.

It's just not fair.