Father's Day

I've been kind of dreading this weekend for a while now.  Although Sunday is surrounded on one side by my birthday and on the other side our wedding anniversary, I just knew it would be a difficult time for me.  This is my first Father's Day without my Dad.  As if I already didn't remember him and wish him back enough already, I am completely surrounded on all sides by reminders of him.  Scott and I went out for a date night tonight and we had a blast together.  Sadie came along for the ride and was perfectly well behaved so we could enjoy some adult discussion and just be together. 
On the way home, we got to talking about my Dad and as we drove straight into the setting sun we were both blinded by tears.  It still feels so fresh to me.  Those final two weeks of his life are like an open wound that I'm hoping will heal with time. Sitting by his bedside watching him struggle for each breath will forever be a memory that I can't escape from.  I try to remember the good.  I try to dwell on his laughter, his unbelievable faith in me and support of me.  I try to focus on what our life was like before March of 2012 when he got sick, but I can't seem to escape this last year and the pain and sadness and confusion and hardship that came with it. 

This year for Christmas I made my Dad a photo book of our life together.  It started with pictures of him holding me as an infant, smiling with me through the years and ending with some photos of me crouching next to his wheelchair putting the best smile I could on my face despite the pain.  In the very back of the book I wrote a letter to my Dad.  It was a letter that summed up everything I had been wanting to say, but couldn't find the words for.  I gave my Dad this gift that I had poured hours of my life and many tears into in a quiet moment when we were home alone together - just a few days before Christmas.  We flipped through the book together, looking at all the photos of us and our family throughout the years and then I read my letter out loud to him.  We both had tears in our eyes by the time I looked up from reading it and he gave me a huge hug and expressed how proud he was of me.  I will treasure that moment forever. 

I read this same letter at his memorial service, and I'm sharing it here - to help me remember my Dad on this Father's Day, and every day.  He was a good, good man and a really amazing father.  I know I'm blessed to have had him in my life for 30 years and know that I will see him again some day.  I love you, Daddy. 

Dear Daddy,
Merry Christmas!  I know that these words are not even going to begin to express to you exactly how much you mean to me, but I'm going to try to articulate it anyways. 

I want to start by saying thank you.  Thank you for being an incredible husband to Mom, a steadfast and loving father to Caren and me and a committed and involved Bepa to my children.  I have a lifetime of memories that all include you - your laughter, your encouragement, your wisdom, your kindness, your support.   You have helped make this life of mine an amazing one and for that I am forever grateful. 
 

I have so many happy memories from my childhood.  I remember sitting on your lap and reading Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose and countless Berenstain Bears books with you.  I remember moving all the furniture in the living room and wrestling with you on the floor until I was giggling so hard we had to stop to catch our breath.  I remember learning to ride my banana seat bike and you being right at my side as you let go of the seat, cheering for me all the way.  I remember driving around the back roads of New Hampshire, trying to see if there was any part of this area you didn't know like the back of your hand.  We would listen to Oldies 99.1 on the radio and drive and drive just for the fun of it. 

I remember the distinct smell of ink and the loud roar of the machines when I'd come visit you at the Country Press and how much I loved playing in the special little revolving doors that brought you into the dark rooms.  I will always remember your love of Christmas and how excited you were to sneak around picking out special gifts for each of us. I loved when you would wrap the tiniest little gift inside three different boxes within each other just to see the confusion and joy on our faces when we opened it.  One of my favorite memories is being woken up early before school.  You would whisper to me that the perfect amount of fresh snow had fallen the night before and that it was a perfect day to hit the slopes.  You would call into work and call into my school and arrange for us to spend a day together.  I loved to ski, but that wasn't really the point.  It was the opportunity to spend a day with you, doing something together that we both enjoyed.  Thank you for teaching me to love the snow, and the outdoors and that skipping school on occasion was good for the soul! I could go on and on with specific memories, but mostly I remember you being present.  You were always there for my birthday parties and family dinners around the kitchen table.  You were at my school plays and chorus concerts and athletic events.  You knew all of my friends and they all loved you.  You made me feel special and important and like I could do anything.  Thank you for that.  Thank you for giving me confidence in who I am and who God created me to be.  

I love how you always tried to embarrass me when I was younger (actually, you still have a knack for this!).  Whether it was singing loudly as we walked through the mall together or wearing a funny outfit that I typically would have been horrified to be seen with - I somehow was never embarrassed by you.  I think it's because everyone, and I mean every single person you've ever met, loved you so much.  You made people laugh and made them feel special and because of that all my friends thought you were the best Dad ever.  I was so proud to be seen with you.  I loved that my friends knew you were on campus in college because we could hear your laughter long before we could actually see you.  You were everyone's favorite, and because of that I thought you could do no wrong. 
I'm not sure I can ever really thank you enough for sharing your love of soccer with me.  Playing soccer truly helped shape me into who I am today and it means so much to me that we have shared this passion over the years.  Thank you for the countless hours you spent kicking around with me, letting me shoot on you or going over to the kick board at Proctor.  Thank you for driving thousands of miles throughout my career to bring me to club practices and tryouts and for coming to nearly every game I've ever played.  Your presence on the sideline pushed me to want to be better.  If you were running late for some reason I would feel distracted until I could hear your voice cheering for me, pushing me to work harder and play smarter.  As soon as I knew you were there I would suddenly turn my game up a notch, always striving to make you proud.  I love the legacy that you left at both Kearsarge and Gordon and that I was able to follow in your footsteps at both schools.  I was proud to be a Benson and proud to play on the same fields you played on.  Thank you for being an incredible coach - both formally in high school and informally throughout my career.  Your confidence and faith in me helped me to accomplish things I don't think I ever thought possible. 

I heard a quote somewhere that said the greatest thing a father can do for his children is love their mother.  This is truly one of the greatest gifts you could have ever given me.  I always knew that you and Mom were in love.  I knew that little disagreements wouldn't ruin your marriage.  I never had to worry throughout middle school or high school about what would happen if you separated, who I would live with, or how it would change my life.  I knew that you were together forever.  I knew you had made a commitment to each other and that you would stand by that for the rest of your life.  Thank you so, so much for the dedication and love you've shown Mom throughout all these years (and Mom, your care for Dad these last nine months nearly brings me to tears when I think of the love and commitment you are showing to him.  Thank you).  Providing us with a stable home was the most precious gift you could have given to Caren and me and I will always be thankful for it.  Without ever having to use words, you showed me what it means to be a good husband and a good father.  You helped me to understand what it was I should be looking for in a spouse, and I'm so blessed to say that I found someone to spend my life with who is as committed and loving and caring as you have always been to Mom.  Thank you for showing me what I deserved and for setting such a high standard for me to follow in my own life. 

Lastly, and probably most importantly, thank you for showing me how to love God, serve God and follow God.  Your faith is one of the things I most admire about you. 

It is so real.  You have taught me that it's good to wrestle with questions, to dig deeper, to own my faith.  You have shown me what it means to love others unconditionally, to accept people for who they are.  The way you welcome people into your home has always amazed me.  You make people feel at home and you shower them with kindness and generosity.  You share your belongings and your money with others even when you have so little for yourself.  I have always admired you and Mom for your hospitality and for living the life that Jesus calls us all to live.  Thank you for showing me what being a Christian really means and for helping me become a person who is continually striving to love God and love others more and more each day. 

Dad, you have always been my biggest fan, my greatest supporter and the person that I most look up to in this world, and watching you endure all that you have these last nine months has been the hardest thing I've ever gone through.  Sometimes I just want to curl up and cry and other times I want to scream at God and beg him to work a miracle.  But, you have been so steady throughout this entire journey.  You have shown me how to be brave, even when you're afraid.  You've shown me how to have faith, even in the darkest of times.  You've shown me how to lift others up, even when the world seems to be crashing around you.  You've shown me how to trust, even when life seems hopeless. 

You've shown me how to smile, even when that might be the last thing you want to do.  You are the bravest, strongest, kindest man I know, and I am so, so proud to be your daughter.  Throughout this difficult time, I am continually reminded how blessed I really am.  I'm blessed to have had an incredibly solid relationship with you for over 30 years now.  Some people never know the love of an earthly father, but I do, and I have never taken that for granted.  I'm blessed that you have been such a strong presence in my life, not just as a child or a teenager, but as an adult as well.  Watching you love on my children brings me the greatest joy.  Thank you for making them laugh, for reading them books, for allowing them to be a part of your life, even when the noise and the chaos was sometimes difficult for you to handle in recent months.  They love their Bepa.  They pray for you every night and Camden flips his pillow over to the cold side "just like Bepa" before falling asleep.  I'm so blessed that you got to watch me grow up and see me get married to a wonderful man,  that you have been able to know and love my children, and see our run down house become a beautiful home. 

No matter what happens in the future.  No matter how many weeks or months or years you are in my life, know that I consider myself blessed because of your unyielding presence in my life.  You mean the world to me and I love you with all that I am. 
Love always,
Lindsey (LB)

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

 

Waiting

I've done a lot of waiting this year.  Waiting for good news.  Waiting for answered prayers.  Waiting for my belly to grow.  Waiting.  Trying to be patient and trusting.

I sat by my Dad's bedside as he slowly slipped from this world to the next.  For more than a week I watched, and I waited.  I waited for him to take his last breath.  Every moment wondering if this would be it.  Every night when I kissed him on the forehead and told him what an incredible Dad he was to me I wondered if I'd see him again.  Every night I fell asleep with my phone next to my bed, waiting for the dreaded phone call that was bound to come.  And then one night, about an hour after I had said yet another "final" goodbye to him, the phone did ring.  And it was it.  The waiting was over.  It had actually happened.  And I arrived at my parents' house just a couple minutes later and sat with him and loved him and cried.

And now I find myself waiting once again.  Though this time I'm not waiting for a final breath.  I'm waiting for a first breath.  A first cry.  I'm waiting for my heart to become whole instead of waiting for it to break.  

In just a few short days I'm going to give birth to our precious little girl.  Maybe on her due date, March 25th, which would have been my Dad's 59th birthday.  And when I'm in those horrible, painful moments of labor, I'm going to remember how brave my Dad was throughout his entire journey, but specifically during those final weeks.  I learned, as I held his hand, that dying isn't easy.  That it's physically exhausting and draining and challenging and heartbreaking and scary.  I learned that going from this life to the next takes courage and, if you believe in heaven and eternity with God, death is, in a way, being born into a new world.

I'm going to take what I learned from my Dad and tackle this labor with the same courage and strength that he showed me at the end of his life.  I dread labor.  I have had some pretty horrendous experiences in the past and I can already feel the pain of the back labor I've had with both of my previous births just thinking about it.  But I'm ready.  I'm ready for new life.  I'm ready for a little precious person to bring hope and joy and grace to our family.  I'm ready.  And so I will wait once again, but this time my heavy heart has been replaced with one of hope. 

Grief

As most of you know, I lost my Dad on Thursday night, January 31, 2013.  I've been taking a little hiatus from the blog.  I mean, how do you address something as major as this loss has been for me in a blog post?  And yet, it wouldn't be right to just carry on with my usual happy posts without even acknowledging the pain I am experiencing.  So here is my attempt to share just a piece of this journey with you...

I have always been a Daddy's girl.  Not in the way that might first come to mind when you hear that phrase.  He certainly didn't spoil me rotten or buy me anything I wanted.  I grew up in a family that believed in living a very simple lifestyle without a lot of frills or extras and that was fine by me.  No, I was a Daddy's girl in that he really could almost do no wrong in my mind.  We were very close throughout my entire childhood and into my adult life.  I loved to spend time with him, I was never embarrassed by him, and much to my mother's dismay it seemed like I always took his side in any disagreement within our home.  Trying to come to grips with the fact that he's actually gone has been very difficult.  In a way it all seems incredibly surreal...like it's just a dream that I'll eventually wake up from.  I'm not sure the reality of what has really happened has sunk in yet and I'm not sure if or when it ever will.

A part of me had been grieving for the last 10+ months of his life.  Watching him endure all he did was incredibly painful - trips to the ER last March following days of being unable to move at home and leaving undiagnosed, until they finally did a CT scan a week later and discovered a tumor that had completely eaten away one of his vertebrae in his back causing his spine to collapse...standing with him as he came out of anesthesia many, many times over the course of these months...being the only person in the hospital room with him last March when the spine surgeon came in and discovered that he was paralyzed from a hematoma that was pressing against his spine as a result of too much blood thinner given to him in the hospital following his major surgery and seeing him rushed off to the operating table once again...watching him work SO hard at Health South for six weeks as an inpatient and another number of months as an outpatient trying to regain strength with the hope that one day he would walk again - only to be told months later that actually the cancer on his femur and pelvis would never allow him to walk again and to immediately stop all the work he had been focused on for months...

holding his legs as my mom worked the lift to carry him from his bed to the living room chair - the two places he alternated between for the last 3-4 months of his life...so many trips to the hospital for radiation, blood transfusions, operations, all of which required transportation in an ambulance...sitting by his bedside keeping vigil during those final two weeks when his health plummeted so fast.  Waiting and watching for that last breath.  Telling him time after time of my love for him, that we would be OK without him whenever he was ready to let go, that he was such an incredible father, husband and grandfather, that I wouldn't be who I am today without him, that I was proud of him and proud to be his daughter.

I've been grieving.  I've been grieving for 11 months now.  And I know there is more to come.  I'll grieve the first time I step on the soccer field this summer and the realization that he won't ever see me play again hits like a truck.  I'll grieve the next time I make cheesecake and he won't be there to share our favorite dessert together.  I'll grieve when I welcome my daughter into this world in March (potentially on his birthday which is her due date) and he won't be there to proudly hold her in his loving arms.  I think I'll carry grief with me in some form or another for the rest of my life, but I know, I know, that he's not suffering anymore.  I know he's in a place where there are no more tears, no more pain.  I'm thankful that there is hope and life after death - but it still hurts.  And I still miss him.  And I think I always will.

 I love you, Daddy.