t e n

 Just like every year on January 7th, I'm not quite sure where to start. 

I sit down to the blank white screen and I trust that the words will come. It feels like at some point I'll run out of them. Like there won't be anything left to say. But for whatever reason, I feel like I should just keep creating the space and see what happens. Trust what comes. 

Grief is such a funny thing. A thing I've been learning and relearning for the last ten years. A thing I've never been any good at honestly. 

And so that's why I come here and I write. Because this seems to be the only place that I've ever known what to do with grief. 

I've imagined this date--this year--for such a long time. What it would feel like to have lived an entire decade without my dad. It's felt like a lifetime and like a couple of blinks all at the same time. 

I remember once when I lived in Mexico, on a regular day, I was just putting some things away in my makeshift pantry. I glanced to the left and noticed my wall of pictures strung on the wall--the photo wall I have strung up in every apartment I've ever lived in. And my eyes filled with tears as one thought struck me. 

My dad didn't know anyone in those pictures with me. That much life had happened since I lost him, and so much of it that he would never know. People that had become like family to me, moments that had defined me, places that were second homes--entire chapters of my life that he would never know. And I just cried. 

And that is grief. As real and raw as it can be. It never shows up when you expect it or when you make room for it or even when you sort of want it to. Sometimes when I want to grieve I feel nothing at all and sometimes when I'm trying to just get up and get ready for work, I can't stop the tears from streaming down my face. Sometimes I see the mountains on a clear Seattle day and I'm overwhelmed with sadness that my daddy will never see them. Sometimes his birthday rolls around and I make plans to let myself be sad, and instead the day passes by before I even realize what it was. And then I fell guilty about that. 

That is grief. 

So here we are, ten years later. All the time I spent imagining what today might be like. What I might feel. How I might respond. And you know. After all this time all I know is that with grief you can't know anything at all. You can't know when it's coming or how it will show up or what it will do to you. 

So as this day comes to a close. As I sit yet again in front of this white screen and allow the words to just come, Here's what I'll say. 

Somehow ten years is the hardest yet. Of course time has healed the wound in many regards--it allows you to pick yourself up and go on with your life, and not be overwhelmed and held back by the grief on the daily. 

That's all true. 

But this is also true. 

I don't remember much about the days right after. It's really blurry with a few very clear and sharp memories flashing through. But I do remember one conversation from that Friday night. Our house filled with people and plants and so much pasta (Youngstown, OH is way more Italian than you might realize.) I remember exactly where we were standing, me and a lifelong friend of my family. And I said through tears...this isn't even the hardest part. What am I going to do on my wedding day? When I have a kid? How will I face those things without him there. 

And while time and a lot of God's grace has been kind to let me move forward and keep living just like my daddy would want, it also gets harder as the years pass and life happens and there is so much I don't get to share with him. Advice I need from him and won't ever have. Moments that won't ever be the same without him there. 

He'll never see Seattle. This city I know I love so much because of him. His love for trees and nature. His retirement dreams of taking a train all the way across the country with my mom just to see it. He'll never know the way that I love it and the way that it became home to me. The family I found here. That I became a nanny, a  God mother, a church planter, a pastor, a recruiter. He'll never know my little dog Lincoln who is almost as old as he's been gone. I'll never see them wrestle and my dad make fun of his underbite and act like he doesn't like him when we all know he secretly adores him. 

I missed my dad at my college graduation. When I know he would have been front and center in his CBC hat or t-shirt or something--scratch that--my mom would have made him wear a tie to the ceremony and he would have been annoyed about that and immediately changed afterwards to rep my school again. But he would have been in all the most obnoxious places with the most obnoxious camera taking endless amounts of photos and embarrassing me like usual. He would have been so proud that I got that degree and that I did the thing that I loved even though so many people didn't understand it. 

I wish he could have been there for that quarter life crisis of mine. When I was dumped right before moving my life to a new state and somehow ended up back in my bedroom in Boardman, OH working at the Southern Park Mall at 25. I wish he could have been there to remind me that it wasn't me--there was nothing wrong with me--and maybe just maybe to chew out that boy. I wish he could have helped me make sense of things when I felt so lost and so stuck all at the same time. But at the same time, I wonder if I would  have ended up in Mexico had I not felt so lost back then. 

I wish I could have seen him in his high socks and his t-shirt from somewhere we'd been and his ball cap trapsing all over Mexico with me probably trying to speak Spanish and laughing at himself while he did. I wish I could have seen him try authentic tacos for the first time and how proud he was of my mom for getting her passport and going so far out of her comfort zone. I wish I could have heard him laugh when I told him stories from that first year of teaching. I needed him to make me laugh and to look on the bright side. 

I wish he could have seen my mom. How much she's grown. How brave and strong she's become. How much she fought for herself and for me to be okay again. How far she has come. How far her and I have come and how close we are now. 

I wonder what he would have thought about me coming back to Seattle. Working for Microsoft. I know he would have kept the company store in business buying every t-shirt, hat, and mouse pad they had. I'm sure he would have committed to purchasing only Microsoft products by now and he would for sure finally ditch the Browns to be a Seahawks fan (even though my mom doesn't believe that.) 

I'm sure he would have sent every possible field guide photo and article on butterflies and rocks of the Pacific Northwest that I should be looking out for with specific instructions of when and where and how to find them. 

I wish I could see my dad with an iPhone. We were just breaking into camera phones when he passed and I was teaching him how to text. Him and my mom were way too into Farmville, so I can't imagine what he could have done with a smart phone. I wish I had a text chain with my dad. I know it would make me laugh several times a day. 

And now for the hardest things of all. This year I will get married. To a wonderful man who reminds me so much of my dad in so many ways. But I will get married knowing that my dad will never know who that man is. Never having his blessing or assurance or guidance in that space. I'll walk down the aisle alone without him to steady me and remind me that I'm doing the right thing and making a great choice. Without him hugging V and giving him my hand. 

So this is ten. 

A decade of life lived without my dad. 

And I know I say this every year, but as much as I miss him and wish he were here with us, I learned a hard and really beautiful lesson a while ago. 

I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't be here if I hadn't lost him. 

It's true that our people shape us and make us who we are while they're here with us. It's also true that we are shaped and remade when we lose them and learn to live without them. 

We think things and go places and make choices that we may not have had life stayed the same. 

And so while we can look back and think of all the moments and chapters we missed them in, we have to recognize that those moments and chapters may not have even happened if they were still here. 

And gosh I miss my dad, but I cannot imagine life without the people and the places and the experiences and the lessons learned and all of the becoming since he left. The person I might not be today if he were still here. 

So as hard as this is to say--and sort of shocking to myself even--I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't trade that all in to have my dad back. He wouldn't want me to. He would have wanted us to keep living and laughing and learning and loving. 

So we did. 

Because God is good. Oh He is so good. He is kind and He is gracious and He is present and personal and He is so wise and sovereign. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it and just how to weave it all together. He knows what is best for His children. He sees the bigger picture when we so often can't. And while we are kicking and screaming and shouting whys at the sky, he is so near reaching for our hand and just waiting for us to look up and let him talk and let Him show us what He's doing. He's always waiting for us to let Him in and let Him show us His heart that is full of love for us and that never wants anything less than the very best for us even when that might hurt. He wants us to know that it breaks His heart to see us hurt or to question His intentions towards us, but He's so patient and tender through our grief and our anger. He remains just as close. He remains the same through all of the changing and grieving and letting go. 

And that is how I can say that. That is the only way that I've survived ten years without my dad. Ten years of unanswered questions. Ten years of whys. 

Because God is only love. Nothing else. Because I can trust that whatever comes from His hand--whatever He gives or takes--is only ever from a heart full of love and a wisdom beyond what I could ever understand. 

So here's to ten more years of missing my daddy in all of life's moments. But also to ten more years of growing and learning and loving and becoming in ways I never could if my story were any different.