Seventeen Years

They say that time heals all wounds, but if there's something I've learned in the 17 years you've been gone, it's that it really isn't true. It seems like the older I get, the more I miss you... or maybe it's more accurate to say that I miss the idea of you. I don't remember enough to know what kind of father you would have been while I was growing up, but from what people say, I'm sure you would have been a great one! At every new stage in my life, there are things that you should have been here for, but you couldn't be. You should have been making your famous home movies at all of my birthday parties. You should have taught me to drive. Maybe then I could have learned to drive with my knees like you did sometimes! You should have been here for my first voice recital, my first play, my first band concert, my first cheerleading competition, my first choir concert, my first father-daughter dance. It should have been you moving me into my dorm and into my apartment. You should have been the first one to teach me to use an electric drill... and I wouldn't have put it through my hand either! You should have been the one standing on the porch intimidating Jake Fisher when he came to pick me up for prom, the one who could always tell me I was beautiful and make me believe it.

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the woman you'd thought I would be. Though, somehow I don't know that your dream for your little girl was to be a theatre teacher. I can only imagine what you thought listening all these years to things I said I wanted to be when I grew up. Which ones were your favorites? Which ones surprised you? Let me guess, none of them surprised you? You probably thought I could do anything in the world I wanted, or at least I like to think that that is the kind of thing of you would have said. Most of the time, I think I have this incredibly idealized view of what it would have been like if you had been here, then I think... that you married Mom, and she is so amazing and compassionate and strong, so how could you be any less amazing? Sometimes she'll say that Brian or Kevin have things about them that remind her of you, but she never says that about me, which makes me kind of sad, like maybe I didn't get any piece of you somehow.

A lot of people have stepped into my life to fill the gap that was left after your accident, and I am so fortunate to have had so many people love and care about me, but I don't think it will ever really be enough. I don't think my heart will ever really heal. I think there will always be an empty space there that all of your love, all of our memories were supposed to fill up. I know that I wouldn't be nearly the same person I was now if we hadn't lost you, but all of the great, amazing things that have come out of a terrible situation will never truly make up for it, and no one will ever be able to take your place or give me back what I've lost. I hardly remember you, and yet I spend every day missing you.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."