She still missed her daddy sometimes

My favorite season of the year has always been Spring. I love when the trees that have been bare and brown all winter start to show tiny buds that continue to grow and green out until they slowly change the landscape from barren to lush. The flowers begin to bud and bloom, and it’s as if nature is showing us, through each budding leaf or blooming flower, that there is always a new season of life, even when we thought that all had died.

And of all my favorite months of Spring, my very favorite has always been April. Partly because it’s my birth month. Partly because Easter often falls in that month, along with Good Friday, which was always a special day that my dad and I shared.  The month of April is also both child abuse awareness month and immune deficiency awareness month, two causes very close to my heart.

But April is a bittersweet month for me as well. Because it is at the beginning of April, on April 2^nd, that I lost my father.

Today in fact marks 28 years that he has been gone.

I was 3 weeks short of my 23^rd birthday when he died. And as each year passed after, and I commemorated the date of his death, I would always think, my dad has been gone this percentage of my life. 5 years ago, at year 23, was particularly hard. Because it meant that I had officially lived as many years without him as with. And here I am today at my lifetime plus 5 years.

It’s hard to explain the loss of a parent at a young age to someone who has not experienced that loss. As I have grown and matured, and learned about trauma, and grief, and loss, on an intellectual level, I realize that the loss is more than just the loss of the person themselves. It is the loss of what that means to you as a person.

Can a daughter who has lost her father ever again be a Daddy’s girl?

Will there ever again be another man in that girl’s life that she can go to for unbiased wisdom, support, and love?

Will she ever again feel completely protected or safe?

I recognize that my dad was a good man, an honorable man, and a reliable man. But he was far from perfect. Because he was human. And I recognize that the pedestal I have in many ways placed him on in the years since his loss isn’t one that he would have wanted or honestly deserved.

I wonder how our relationship would be if he were still alive today. Would he like who I have become? Would he understand what I believe? Would he support all the things I hold so close to my heart?

The truth is, I don’t know the answers to those questions. Or the answer to the question of who I would even be if he had lived, rather than died. Because as much as I was shaped by his life, I have been equally shaped by his death. For good and for bad. But in all ways, it has made me who I am.

I miss you, Daddy.

I love you, Daddy.

And I look forward to the day that I will see you again, with my Jesus at your side.