Seven years

June sneaks up on me every year. I know, it seems silly...it's always between May and July. And yet, May seems to fly by more quickly every year, and suddenly June is here. Damn June.


Seven years ago today I woke up in the middle of the night and watched my father die. I pleaded with him to open his eyes, to take another breath. I watched emergency services try to save him. I sat next to his still form in the hospital after the doctor's told us he was gone before he got there. I came home and cleaned boot marks off my mother's bedroom floor so she wouldn't have to be reminded of what had happened there it the darkest hours of the night.


Seven years ago today, I lost my touchstone, my true north. I have no words to describe what he was to me other than that one most poignant word...he was my dad.

Every year, June kicks my ass. My father's death, my father's birthday, Father's Day. But no father.

We are supposed to outlive our parents. But we are also supposed to see them into their old age, complain about the nursing care or their demands or the fact that they've moved in with us.

We are not supposed to lose our parents when we are only 25, before we dance with them at our wedding, before they have held any of their grandchildren.

For seven years, June 3 has come and gone, and a part of me still doesn't believe. He has been absent for some of the most significant events in my life, and yet it's hard to believe he's gone. I still hear him, I still know when he would laugh, and I still see him as he was the night before he died and the day after.

I think of him when the boys are playing baseball, and I know how proud he would have been sitting in the bleachers with us.

I think of him when my sons hug J.R.'s stepfather and grandfather, and I wonder if they know how precious their roles in the lives of my son's are.

I think of him when I look at Palmer, a virtual carbon copy of my father, who he will never know as more than a picture or a story.

And he is the reason I wish I had a daughter...so J.R. can know what my dad and I had. So his daughter can yell the football scores to him as he mows lawns on a Sunday morning. So he can get phone calls from her at college, asking what he thinks she should do. So he can dance at her wedding and hold her children.

Seven years. And while the days in between hurt less as time goes by, today never feels better.

Today always hurts one year more.