A Short Letter to Daddy from November 23, 2008

Dear Daddy,

It's been three years since you left for Home, and still I ache everyday.  The ache isn't always the same.  Some days I'm really happy, and I ache to call you and tell you about the good things in my life.  Some days are frustrating, and I ache to hug you, to feel safe and loved in your big, belly-intruding hugs.  Some days I simply ache because I don't get to sit on the carport with you and enjoy the beautiful evening weather.

One-thousand and ninety-five days..... that's how many days we've lived without you now.  Amazing.  At least five hundred of those were tear-filled.  On two of those days I had breakups.  On two others we gave it just one more shot.  On one of those days, we all moved out of that big house in Raeford.  One day I graduated from college.  Another day I became a high school English teacher.  On many different days, Mama and I heard the call of the mourning dove.  One day, I stopped counting the number of days.....

You know, for the thousands of days before you left, you gave us enough love and devotion to last a lifetime.  I miss you, and I'm sad you're not here to share the holidays (and everydays) with us, but I'm grateful for every moment we had with you.  In between all of the aching, I'm grateful you were my Daddy.  Grateful that most of my memories of you involve full-bodied laughter and toothy full-faced grins.  Grateful that you're happy and pain-free and in the presence of our Living God.  And when we all get to Heaven, we'll have a million more moments and days with you that will be even better than what we experienced here on earth.

Keep leaving dimes for Mama.

I love you,
Katie Kelly (and her goo-goo-googley eyes.....)

A Memory for Father's Day

It's a sad truth that not all of us get to hug our dads' necks on Father's Day.  Some kids have dads serving overseas, some adults live in different cities or states than their parents, and some folks have never had positive (or even existing) relationships with their fathers.  And then there's the group of us who've joined, at one point or another, that unfortunate club entitled "My Dad Passed Away."  It's not a fun club, Friends, and if you're a member of it I want to extend my deepest sympathies.

But this is not meant to be a sad post.  It's not meant to make you feel sorry for me or for any other member of the M.D.P.A.C.  I simply wanted to bring you a memory that I wrote about once when I had my Daddy on my mind and heart.  I wanted to let you know that even when we lose someone, we can keep them alive by telling their stories, and by telling our stories that include them. 

I miss my Daddy, but I know this world is but a fleeting moment in the Bigger Picture.  I'll get to see him again.  Until then, I'll smile and remember him through stories like this:

Dancing with Daddy

                I was around six years old.  There was brown shag carpet under my feet, carpet that Mama fussed about the whole time we lived in that house because it hid dirt and bits of plastic that came off of our toys.  I loved the feel of that carpet, would lay on it for hours in my tent made out of old sheets and wooden drying racks.

                Mama and Brother sat at the piano, because he always had first dibs on that bench with her.  She had taught piano lessons when she was pregnant with him, which meant he was the one with the natural talent on the keys.  He has perfect pitch, and can play by ear, facts that drove me nuts for the four years I painstakingly tried to teach myself to play on that same piano years later.  They jubilantly pounded out the hokey notes of Heart and Soul, Mama taking the baseline and Brother the melody.  Mama switched up the rhythms and techniques, and as I write this I realize that it must be a very different memory for Brother – was that the night Mama taught him the baseline?  Was it as pivotal a night for him as for me?

                I can see Sister dancing with Daddy, hear her laughter as he directed her this way and that with the twirls and the turns of a shag dance (the only dance I ever saw him perform).  Her hair was shorter then, less curly.  Now, as a thirty-year-old, she has enviable corkscrew curls that are light and oddly manageable.  Then, as an eleven-year-old, she had yet to figure out her hair, and it swayed about her face in a fluffy, only slightly-unruly manner.  Does she think of this night still?  Does she remember this night of dancing with Daddy as fondly as I do?

                At some point, as we danced by the fireplace, in between the occupied piano and the tattered old recliner, Daddy spun Sister to be seated, threw out his hand to me (I had been happily clapping and sitting on the coffee table which had been pushed aside), and joyously urged, “C’mon, Katie! Your turn!”

                The memory goes a little fuzzy there.  I remember grabbing his hand, and giggling as he twirled me.  I can see his beyond-five-o’clock-shadow coming through in the evening hour, his hair flipping out of place.  At some point he stuck his tongue on the edge of his mouth like a boy in third grade would do as he works math problems.  The pieces don’t all fit together, and I can’t even see in my memory a full string of me dancing with him. 

                But I can feel it.  If I close my eyes, I can feel the rhythmic steps (maybe not so rhythmic in my case, since I was only six) of my bare feet on that brown shag carpet.  I can smell the cold radiating off of the old bricks of the fireplace beside us as he whips me around for another spin.  I can see Mama smiling down at Brother, and I can hear Sister laughing. 

And even if I can’t visualize my hand in Daddy’s, I know it was there.  It was there once, and many more times again throughout the next fourteen years.  Whenever I danced with Daddy, it was always a shag dance, and he always laughed and smiled through it all.  No stoic, proper, stuffy father figure for me.  I got one of the jubilant ones who taught me that dancing was about having fun.