In Loving Memory...

It's been 30 years. There are some days when it feels like much longer and other days when it feels as though it was only yesterday. On December 9th, 1982 my father lost his three year battle with leukemia and passed at about 9:30 in the morning. My mother, sister, brother and I were all there when it happened, and I'll always be grateful for that.

I feel very blessed to have had my father in my life for the eighteen years I had with him considering he was almost killed in a car accident when I was only a baby. He was in a coma for several days before he came out of it. The driver of the car he was a passenger in was killed so it could have been much worse. Sometimes it felt as though he was on borrowed time.

I was just a month shy of my fifteenth birthday when he was diagnosed with cancer. It was Halloween night and I'd gotten back from taking my five-year-old brother out trick-or-treating to find my mother on the phone. My father had to travel to a hospital about a four hour drive away and was calling from there. I often wonder how he felt with his family so far away.

The doctors gave him six months to live, but he fought and had three more years with us. He passed just two weeks after I turned eighteen. He was forty-five.

I'm older now then my father was when he died and I still feel young. It's weird to realize I've been married longer than my parents were. (They celebrated 21 years the year he died while hubby and I celebrated our 25th last August.) My mother remarried nine years after my father died. It's really strange to realize my step father has been in my life longer than my father was.

My father died young, but he will always be in my heart. I've already talked to my brother and sister today and will call my mom later. It's been thirty years, but I still miss him every single day.

I love you daddy...