You’ve been gone for twenty years.
I had just turned 13. Easter weekend was coming up. And you were gone. No chance for goodbye. You were just gone. Stolen from us by the bullet of a gun.
I wish you could have seen us grow up. You didn’t get to see the football games. The orchestra performances. The graduations. The college tours. The moves. All of those memories stolen.
I wonder what it could have been like for you to be at my wedding. I wonder what it would have been like for you to hold your granddaughter when she was born or to know her now. There are so many moments over the years where I have considered what that moment would have been like with you there.
That’s the grief that hasn’t left me after twenty years. It’s imagining what we’ve missed out on. It’s holding on to all of the memories I do have from our 13 years together. I remember when we asked you to give up smoking for Christmas one year. And you just said ok and did it after years and years of smoking.
It’s realizing all the ways you’re reflected in me and how some of that is not who I want to be. It’s learning all the lessons you taught me. Whether it was what to do or what not to do. I’m grateful for all of that.
I’m curious what you would think of my career choice. Or my shift from football fanatic to soccer hooligan. Or living in Maryland outside DC. It’s also impossible to know whether I would’ve made all the choices I’ve made. My entire life trajectory may have been different.
I wanted to go back to your favorite haunts in Winter Haven and have a drink there. I wanted to bring Laura and Molly and show them around the town and what I remember.
I cannot believe it’s been twenty years. I miss you and I miss all of the things we didn’t get to do.