In Memory

It's 3 am. I can't sleep. Today would have been my dad's 62nd birthday and is the one year anniversary of his funeral. Somehow I made it through Wed., the anniversary of his death without a tear but today I can't sleep and am a blubbering mess and the day hasn't really started yet.

It's been a year and I still can't think about him without my throat tightening and tears at least moistening my eyes. Sometimes the sadness is because I miss him and wish he was here to see the kids grow up. Sometimes the sadness is regret..that I couldn't have done more in the last months of his life to take care of him. Due to the circumstances at the time, there wasn't anything else I could have done but there's still part of me that wishes things could have been different, that I could have brought him home with me and taken care of him so that he wouldn't have spent his last months alone.

And sometimes the tears are from thankfulness, that God still saved him, even in his last 6 months of life after a lifetime of rejecting Him. I treasure the almost daily conversations about what he had read in God's word that day or about how he was praying every night before he went to bed and how he was trying to make better choices in his life. I am still amazed that God chose to honor my prayer that began when I was a little girl. I honestly don't know that I could cope with losing him if I didn't have the promise that I will see him again.