Daddy

Daddy at Daddy at 43. Me at 21.

Today is, quite possibly, my father’s last on this big spinning orb. The nurses told my sister Celeste yesterday, that he’s got one to two days left.

My heart is in the process of shattering. Yes, I knew this was coming but, Daddy always bounces back – why not this time too?

A truth that few people appreciate is that, at the root, everything hurts.
~ Tom Holt, In Your Dreams

Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
~ George R.R. Martin

You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it
.....
To hurt is as human as to breathe.
~ J.K. Rowling

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere
~ Warsan Shire

Do you know the feeling, when your heart is so hurt, that you could feel the blood dripping?

~ Lady Gaga

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

~ Jennifer E. Smith

I wanted to be his life preserver, the thing that would keep him afloat. Instead, he became my anchor.
~ Amanda Grace

I couldn't stand here, hanging on, when the very thing I held disappeared more with each passing day.
~ Becca Fitzpatrick

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly.
~ Maya Angelou

Grief is the price we pay for love.
~ Queen Elizabeth II

The gift my father gave me every day of my life was he believed in me
~ Jim Valvano

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
~ C.S. Lewis

My daddy was my hero—he was always there for me when I needed him, he listened to me and taught me so many things, but most of all he was fun.
~ Bindi Irwin

Between my wonk-ass surgery habit and the blasted pandemic, I haven’t seen him in a year and a half and now, I won’t ever see him again. Here's one of my favorite stories about him, How to Ruin a Tender Moment. Fits well in Pride Month, n'est-ce pas?

 We’re counting down the hours, the minutes til he leaves us. This blows.