Oh Daddy I miss you so much.

I wish I could tell you all the things that have been going on lately, even though they aren’t momentous. Your quiet way of reassuring me made it easier to bear the heaviness of daily life in pain and illness.

I am struggling with this restriction. Whenever I feel I am getting a handle on the limits of my body they change, whenever I feel I can manage the demands of my illness it demands more. I get sicker and weaker and the pain gets worse and the world just passes me by faster with every passing day.

I feel as though I am caught in a river I am not quite strong enough to swim through and without you – my boulder at my back – I am going to be swept away.

Simply put, I’m scared and I want my Daddy.

It’s a bitch. I’m not very good at it.

So here is my attempt number 817:

Yesterday I was trimming a mat for a painting using an exacto knife. It took a while. Ever since my middle finger on my right hand has been numb.

Is this a permanent thing? This forever numbness? If so, is that okay?

How do I accept the limitations my body imposes without sliding into despair?

How do I live life as a branch moved by the stream instead of the dog -with plans of it’s own- trying to drag the branch onto the shore?

They never call, they never write, they never stop in to visit.

This pithy comment you used to say to me was usually accompanied by a melancholy sigh as you remembered those you had lost. Now it is you who are the rude one Daddy dearest.

It has been over a year since you had the temerity to die in my arms, unexpectedly and dramatically, making as big a splash in your death as you were wont to do in your life.

I’ve cried, I’ve failed to sleep most nights, I’ve thought of all the loving things I’d like to say to you and the things I did right and all the things I should have done differently.

I’ve been out to visit my brother twice. He’s been home to see us three times. Your absence is a glue or a rubber band, yanking us back together in a way a life time of children and successes could not.

I am getting sicker. I am glad you aren’t here to see it. I am equally certain you died knowing it was going to happen. You were nobody’s fool, we have known for a while that sicker was in the pipeline, that a cure was no longer on the table, that the future held scary uncertainties. As much as I still long to have you here to talk to about all this or to hold my hand I am glad you don’t have to actually see it.

It’s the small things. The small comforts. Finding an article you wrote. Wearing your sweater. Listening to an interview you gave on CPS.

You are missed my dear one. Terribly.

You are also very, very rude.