One year ago...

So hard to believe one year has gone by... 💔

I miss you, Daddy...

One year ago this evening DJ and I were enjoying a “Mommy-Son Date” at Burger King, about a fifteen minute walk from home, having just left E at the creative writing workshop she was beginning that evening at the bookstore just two blocks west and south of BK; JM had left early that morning to help with counselor training at the camp on the coast, at least an hour and a half away by bus.

And now I don’t recall exactly when I got the call from JM, telling me that he was leaving camp to come home, that my Daddy was not doing well, that my brother and his family were coming over to our house so we could all wait together for any further updates...

So many details are now a blur... I somehow must have managed to move with relative safety in spite of that daze; I don’t remember what I said or did or if I even told anyone about the lump in my chest cavity, where my heart and stomach were supposed to be, when I picked up E. In fact, I don’t even remember picking her up, but I must have...

Even though we’d known his health had been deteriorating for years and even that he was not feeling very well that day, all this still seemed like a very sudden decline...

He had seemed so well, so happy, at Christmas time...

But we had, right after Christmas, decided to get airline tickets to go see him, knowing his health was continuing a gradual downward spiral and realizing that visit might well be “one last time” to share with him here on this broken Earth...

So many hard memories... 💔

But I will be forever thankful for his moments of consciousness that night, especially when E and DJ and I were able to call and talk to him at the hospital while we waited for JM and D&V and the girls to arrive; to hear Pat tell us that, when he heard our voices, he raised his arm to wave in that characteristic fashion of his when we did video calls; and to be able to choke the tears back enough to sing “Solamente en Cristo” to him and find out he was able to hear and even recognize what we were singing.

I will always be thankful for those moments... ❤

As hard as it was to be so far apart that evening and as hard as the year since has been for me personally, I am comforted knowing that I was (and am) where he wanted me to be, serving here where he poured out over four decades of his life...

And I’m thankful for Eternal Hope! ❤