Christmas...

...doesn't usually make me sadder than usual. On the contrary, I have very fond memories of Christmas as a child. It's these memories that can help me through some rough times, but my focus this year is on inviting Daddy to be present with me.

I wish with all my heart that he could come back; that we could go back before he got sick and died. I wish I could have lived my life with him. In person. In real, living flesh. I wish I could have spent my teenaged years fighting with him to become a young woman instead of spending them shut down so that I wouldn't feel the pain of his not being with me.

The 11 year old in me still wishes he would come back. She still wishes that it had been someone else's Daddy that died. She still can't understand why he got sick and medicine couldn't help him. She still feels the deep, soul-wrenching pain that came when he died. She felt her heart break the day she walked home from school and KNEW at the first footstep onto the driveway that he was dead. She--I--still wants him back.

My grown up self understands that Daddy can't come back to me. I understand that what happened happened and it was rando--or maybe not. Whether his illness and death was random or fate or an opportunity for me to learn something in this life, he--his body, his words of wisdom, his jokes, his terrific back scratches--is gone.

What is not gone are my memories and my sense that Daddy is watching over me even now. He's proud of me. He wishes he could be with me. He does not want me to suffer the way I have been. I want to hear from him though, not in a seance kind of way, but I want to feel his presence in my life.

So, I'm inviting him in. I'm inviting him to be with me as I go about my daily business. I'm opening my heart to him again. I don't know what will happen or how I'll feel or even IF I feel anything. But, I want the possibility, and, I want to heal that tear in my heart.