I miss my Daddy.

This is my Daddy and me, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. I loved these trips. Years later I realized that one of the reasons I truly loved St. Francisville was because I always associated it with Daddy. It took me a lifetime to understand that. Smiling here. He was incredibly generous, but somewhat of a mystery to me. To some, he was a stranger. But not to me. I understood him better than anyone in our family. I love him, still. He was the World War II generation, a generation of men who went off to fight a brutal war as boys really. Most of them came back home with a sense of shock and gratitude. They knew hard work. They often drank too much. They did not know how to share their feelings openly.

My Daddy was like that. Smiling. He often said, "We'll see." That was the only way he knew how to say 'no' and even today I can remember him saying these words to me. But he loved me and showed me in little ways. He always bought me pumpkins for Halloween and gave me 'cookie money' at Christmas time so that I could bake all my goodies. He did this because he knew it was the two things I treasured. At times, he bought odd little things for me, such as yard art and even my favorite candy. He came by my house often and never stayed long, thirty minutes at the most and talked about nothing much.  After he died I learned he did this to his favorite sister, Polly. I felt lucky to understand what these little visits really meant, that these were big moments of love, the only way he knew how to express it.

But did he love. He adored my mother and his children.

The last years of his life were difficult and very frustrating for him. He told me how unhappy he was, but I didn't know what to do about it. He was grateful for the help he had, but we all  paid a heavy price for that final comfort. That decline and his death essentially destroyed the illusion of family for me. I cried for a long time, mourning him and a life that would never exist again. Everything died with him in early 2007, every illusion I knew. Every hope. It was the beginning of a decade of a real and deep unhappiness for me. I was shattered.  Reality set in.

But somehow, I don't know how, because I lost so much, when everything else faded away in my life, (including Johnny) I was left standing. My heart intact. Hope once again alive. I was not broken.

I started breathing again in 2018....  This year, I am even working again, on real things, real words, real thoughts.

Daddy, thank you for that time you gave me the words I needed to hear. "I love you."