Dear Dad

Dear Dad,
Today is the 39th fathers day I have spent thinking about you. This year, I am deeply empty inside for the loss of you. I feel your presence around me all of the time, I see your smile in mine and in my son's. I can almost see you sometimes. These almosts don't really add up to much. They are ways that I have derived to cope, simply cope with the canyon of loss I feel without you here. In my lifetime I have only had a very small slice of you. Not even one and 1/2 years. I was 15 months old when you died. What could I possibly do with that? When I was growing up, I used to wish for you, I just knew that you were lost somewhere or that you had been injured, got amnesia and forgot that you had us three girls at home waiting for you. The space in my heart is filled with cobwebs of old desires, wishes, dreams, and what ifs that never happened. They are just flapping in the wind of my mind waiting for a large enough gust to blow them away into the atmosphere. What do these weighted thoughts serve? What do they possibly offer me as an adult with a child? I am not sure. I only know that each father's day, I am reminded that I have spent my entire life without one. Not a day that I can remember did I laugh with you, feel your touch, your hug, the roughness of your hand after a days work. I have felt none of these things. The sound of your laugh is only a vague sound that I have fabricated, to soothe my echoing mind, the sound of your laugh so quiet, and so elusive. In the foreground of my mind, I hear the crashing sound of emptiness and pain. How do I measure the vastness of the space between you and me? There have been times that I have felt so close to you that I did not even know the space was there, but they are always so short lived. The day you sent stephanie to me, the day my son took his first breath. So few days. In my heart I know you are always with me, in my mind I analyze why people say that, what do they think it is really soothing by saying that? It is jut not true. I cannot feel you here, You are here in my mind and in my heart and in spirit and yet I feel the loneliness of not having you here. Mostly I feel the loneliness. On this day I also feel so relieved that our relationship has not gotten eaten up by materialism and the acquiring of things. I have never bought you one gift, I have never had to walk the aisles of the local discount store looking for something you "need". I have only ever given you the gift of my undying love, the pent up desire for just one hug. That is what I give to you. In the night, when my son is sleeping and I feel the softness of his breath on the hair of my arm, I wonder, are you here?, have you seen me?, are you proud of me? I will never know, this hole I have dug and fertilized and prepared for your tree of life, will never be planted in the soil. It will be a hole that will eventually erode, slip inward and blend into the earth.