s e v e n

7
seven
SEVEN

The number doesn't make any sense no matter how many times I say it out loud or even under my breath.
It doesn't register in any form.
It seems unfathomable.

So, I try from a different angle.

10-3
Three less than ten.
Three years short of a decade...
 of life without my daddy.

Today.
January 7, 2018

The calendar is constant.
Always moving and always changing, but somehow always bringing me back to exactly the same places.

This year, I'm missing him more than most.
Or perhaps more than others anyways.
I'm back in Ohio. The bitter cold all around. The snow.
Our house.
Where he left us.
Where we wished he would stay a little longer.

That always feels a little emptier without him no matter how much we go on living.

This year, I don't want to relive it.
I don't really even want to think about it or acknowledge it at all.
The details.
The loss.
The heartache.
The emptiness.

Because after seven years.
All I know is that you have to keep on living.
Even a moment too long spent with the details or the loss or the heartache or the emptiness is enough to keep you from doing that.

And I don't want to.
Because he wouldn't.
Ever.
And he certainly wouldn't want me to.
Stop living that is.
I mean really, really living.
Not on his account.
Not when he did everything he ever could to make sure I lived so fully.

So. Here we are at seven.
And next year it will be eight.
And in two years after that, ten.
The number may change.
But this will not.
That life goes on.
That God is good.
That in spite of it all, there is still so much beauty and so much life to be lived.
.
.
.
.

.

--in loving memory of Randy Wightman (my daddy)-- 

---4.12.48-1.7.11---