Missing loved ones

On a serious note...

It's been almost a year and a half since my dad passed away.  How do I know?  Ella is almost a year and a half.   I love that Ella is growing up, but it kills me that each time she reaches a milestone and we celebrate, it's also a milestone of the time that has passed since the loss of my dad. 





He just celebrated a birthday.  Ella was two weeks old.  He was painting our house.  He loved diving.  He was only 44.

There are so many times that I am reminded that he isn't around.  When I want to call and ask a question, when I want to tell him something cute that Ella did that reminds me of myself, when I hear a funny joke only he would really appreciate, even when I eat something really good that I know he would find delicious, too. 

This month has been especially harder for me.  I went to a wedding.  I almost made it through the whole event, until the father-daughter dance.  It was a flashback like those you see on Cold Case.  I didn't have a father-daughter dance (two, equally loved dads, too complicated), but I remember spinning around on the dance floor with Ryan and thinking of the biggest smile of pride that was glued to my dad's face the entire day.  I broke down in tears and went running from the reception hall.  We left immediately.  I just couldn't pull it together.

Last week, Ryan's grandmother passed away.  She was much older, she had a whole lifetime filled with experiences, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

I don't know how people do it.  Grieve.  They say there are stages that one goes through, but it's more of a heptagon with lines connecting each point to every other point.  Some times, I deny that he really is gone, the next I'll be angry at the circumstances which led to it, then I'll be accepting of it, then I'll be depressed, then I'll feel guilty that in those last few weeks he was painting my house.  I'm just an all over mess.