My mind still sees him. Laying in his recliner, arms thrown behind his head, rubbing his toes together like a cricket rubbing it's legs together. In the mornings he'd sit slumped over in the same chair, looking at his toes, rubbing his forehead...drinking his black coffee.
"Mornin' munchkin" he'd say.
I suppose people wonder why after nine years I still write about him. I wonder about that myself sometimes. Every time I open my laptop to type anything it goes back to him. Maybe because the words bring him back to life to me, if only for a moment. I feel him come to life to just a short moment in time. I close my eyes, and he's there, laughing, smiling, cheering me on. It occurred to me today, that he's the only person in my entire life that has never made me feel like I needed to be anything at all except myself.
I never felt pressured to make better grades in school. I never had a thought in my mind that I needed to play a sport to make him proud. He just was...proud. Just because...and that was everything to me. No matter what pressure I felt, anywhere else in my world. School...friendships...work...relationships..whatever it might be. I knew that the moment I walked through the threshold of my home, that I was enough. It was a safe place to be. I don't think I could have felt more safe.
He didn't rule with an iron fist. He ruled with a firm hand and a tender heart. I see his smile reflected back in my own face. I see his eyes looking back at me, and it's alarming and comforting all at the same time. And I feel part of his heart beating in my chest when I look at my children and feel the love that I have for them...pure...unconditional...perfect love. I desire more and more each day to have the opportunity to tell him things I couldn't tell him before. I want so badly to go back to those few days before he left me and say the words that I was dying to say to him, but didn't because, well, I couldn't.
But I think if I could do that. If I could go back there and look at him. If I could look into his eyes, I think he'd probably say, "Yeah. I already know. You don't have to say anything. Everything you've said already's been good enough." And well, it was, I think...good enough. Because we don't get the perfect ending. We get the ending that we get, and we get the life that we're given, and sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. But, it's ours and no one else's, and that's the beauty of it. 
I've heard lots of stories of fathers and their daughters. But I prefer my tragic love story over any one else's. After all, it's mine...and it's more real than any other life long story that could have been written. He taught me what perfect love meant, and I know, that not every little girl gets the opportunity of being shown that example of perfect, pure, unconditional love. Some never have the opportunity to have it at all. Which kind of makes me think that my story, no matter how brief, isn't nearly as tragic as the one that never happened at all.
Some would say it's sad, that all I have left are these memories in my head, and these photos in a frame. And an ache for memories that could have been, but never were. But I think it would have been a greater sadness to have no memories and no photos, and only an ache for someone who could have been, but wasn't. I'm grateful that on the day he closed his eyes, that there was nothing left for him to say where we were concerned. I knew...everything he had already said was plenty good enough. If I've learned anything from his life and my story, it's that when it's time for me to close my eyes, it most definitely will not be on my terms. Until that day, I have to make sure that my children have the opportunity to look back and say that I loved them as best I could and left no words unsaid. 
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