Dear Dad,

It’s been 3 weeks since you left us, and though it’s so cliché to say, in many ways it already feels like a lifetime. To go from 53 years of your constant presence to suddenly not seeing or speaking to you for 21 straight days…to not being able to reach you, to not even know what your everyday life is like now…it’s a jarring transition. My mind knows you are gone, and conversation is no longer possible. Neither are hugs or your reassuring smiles or your famous smirk…the everyday rhythm of life with you is no longer a part of my life. And when that head knowledge informs my heart once again, I cannot breathe. I can barely stay upright. The tears are instant and furious and I struggle to fill my lungs under this weighty grief.

The awareness of your death has not yet infused my habits.  I file things away in my mind to tell you, things you’d surely want to know, only to remember yet again that I cannot share them and see your eyes light with happiness. I start to pick up snacks that you aren’t here to eat. I constantly recall places and spaces you have always filled, and then, finding them empty, I have to painfully purge that minute bit of your presence. Thus I find myself crying at the ice cream shop, in the grocery store, in your office.  Your face, your voice, the safety of your presence is no longer tangible but the void where you once were certainly is. I see your signature on your 1959 military ration card and I envision the young, lean soldier in your Army photo. You were strong and vibrant then, a version of the guy I remember from my childhood. I miss him, too.

We visit you often, Mom and I. The cemetery has become a near-daily stop.  Rather than standing at the foot of a grave like I always have over the years, I find myself tiptoeing around to your side, the place I was when I last was with you. I want to reach down and hold your hand, even while my brain knows it’s a ridiculous impossibility. I want to tell you how much I have missed you, whisper again that I love you, and yet I can only stand over your lifeless shell in a windy cemetery. I can’t hear your voice. I can’t share anything with you. I can’t connect with you in any way, and my heart aches. I miss my dad.

This ocean of grief feels big enough to swallow me. Lord, give me strength.