Goodbye to 2025

 

Adri was with me every year from Christmas day until after the new year, where she’d head home the Sunday before the first day of school after the winter break, so I was lucky enough to spend every New Year’s Eve with her (with the exception of 1999 when her mother was afraid of Y2K and insisted that she come home before January 1st. That’s a story for another day.)

My dad and grandparents were usually still in town and we’d spend the evening at my mom’s, noshing on finger foods such as olives, shrimp cocktail, pickled herring, brie, cheddar cubes, marinated artichokes, smoked oysters, crackers and spread, etc.

For some reason it became a tradition to watch a couple of 1950s sci-fi films that were fun and a bit schlocky: The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. These were a bit scary but harmlessly so, especially The Blob, staring what seemed like a 45-year-old Steve McQueen playing a teenager just trying to warn his small-town community of a monster in their midst, all in glorious technicolor. It had a great kitschy opening musical theme as well.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a bit darker, both literally (shot in black and white) and figuratively. The protagonist had to stay awake and not succumb to sleep lest he become a pod person, and we could all relate to this as we’d sometimes struggle to keep our eyes open until midnight, bellies full of tinned meat and artisanal cheeses as the last moments of the current year slipped away forever.

Then, at midnight, Adri would yell “Happy New Year!!!” as loud as she could, and, weather permitting, would go in the backyard to yell it so all the neighbors could hear it as well. My grandfather would show off that he still had a lip from his clarinet days and blow through an old (apparently?) decorative brass horn that my mom used as a wall hanging, always succeeding in getting it to bellow out a loud if muffled plaintive note that signified the new year had arrived.

Adri would then take the horn and give it a go but never succeeded, but then she lacked the decades of brass and woodwind experience that my grandfather had as a former band and orchestra teacher prior to his later administrative career. It was fun to see her try, though, eyes bulging and cheeks extended in perfect Satchmo style.

Back then I was still a bit melancholy about the loss of another year, but that gave way to the excitement of what laid ahead for my daughter’s life, the anticipation of getting to see yet another milestone. I’d miss the little girl we’d leave behind in the past, but the young woman she was quickly becoming more than made up for that. For once in my life, time didn’t seem to be a series of static events locked in place in the past but rather an evolving continuum.

As it should be.

As I’ve already droned on about, this year, of course, would not be that way. I was cognizant the entire time since the end of May that time was quickly slipping away, that 2025 and the reality and life it once held was slowly, then quickly, drifting into the past, never to return. New Year’s Eve just amplified this.

I would look at the clock Wednesday night the 31^st with dread seeing the passage of hours as we quickly approached midnight. I think it was pushing me over the edge (admittedly not very long journey as of late,) so I asked Cindy if she would mind if we watched The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and of course she said yes, but she did worry that it might be too much for me.

At that point, however, I hoped that the familiarity of those two movies, getting lost in them and thus not thinking about the ticking of the clock, would outweigh whatever sadness they’d invoke with memories of all the many Eves spent watching them with my daughter.

And it worked. Both movies are short, about 80 minutes each, and for 160 minutes my brain was given a rest. By happenstance we’d timed the viewing so the last movie ended right after midnight.

But perhaps it worked too well. Before I knew it, I heard the next-door neighbors loudly counting down in unison from 10, and it was only then that I looked at the clock and my watch and noticed it was 10 seconds to midnight.

For better or worse, I did not get to savor the last few minutes but rather had the last 10 seconds of 2025, the last 10 seconds of the last year Adrianna was alive, slip away with no time to think about the ramifications.

But I know: that was probably a good thing, right?

Midnight arrived, 2025 was gone forever, and now here’s 2026. I broke down and cried more openly than I have in months as Cindy and I embraced in a long hug that got me from one year to the next.

Steve McQueen had again saved his town, and Kevin McCarthy had finally convinced everyone that the pod people were real. Some things are set in time and never change, at least. I just wish I could have lived a life where I got to say goodbye to one year and welcome the next knowing that the next would be inhabited by Adrianna.

New Year

The passage of time has always been difficult for me. I’ve been overly obsessed with hours and minutes and dates and months and years, overly cognizant of how they all just march on forward relentlessly leaving our past in the dust. This forward arrow of time always depresses me a bit, as I always feel that I am losing an old friend with every tick of the clock or turn of the calendar page.

Since my early childhood, lying in bed at night I’d stare at the clock on the nightstand and watch with a combination of fascination and dread as the minutes would roll by relentlessly.

Now it’s 1:15 am. Now, 1:16. It will never be 1:15am on October 17, 1977 ever again. Look, now it’s 1:30 am.

Time was like a living, breathing entity who’d bond with me for a moment before leaving and suddenly take up residence in the past, where there was really no difference between two hours ago and 30 years ago. Or a century ago. It was all forever over.

And this notion would literally make me sad, the permanent loss of a particular time.

(Now look: I’m well aware that to the extent that there’s a spectrum, this behavior and thought process places me somewhere along that developmental continuum. I’ve come to terms with that; the fact that I’m openly sharing these thoughts should make that evident. I know I’m odd.)

The worst time loss, however, was always the new year. A whole year, 365 days, would be suddenly lost on January 1st at midnight.

“It will never be 1981 again,” I’d say on New Years Eve of 1981, for example, and everyone would chuckle. But I was serious, even though I’d also laugh at the apparent absurdity of the statement. I mean, sure, it will never be xxxx year again, but what of it?

But to me, it was a big deal, a real loss.

When the old year gives way to the new, the old year and everything it contains is forever frozen in time: static, never changing, all the events and happenings of that year forever locked in a figurative time capsule. Each minute, each day, each month, and each year we experience afterward moves us further and further away from those moments. We may move forward, but some things do not. Some things will always be “back then,” forever stuck in that old time period. They become objects in our rearview mirror, quickly receding away from us.

Which brings me to the current “now.” 2025. We’re in the last days of 2025, and soon it will no longer be 2025. We will never see 2025 again. And this year, especially this year, it will be devastating to me.

Adrianna was alive in 2025. Then, almost mid-year, she was not. But she’s still a part of 2025, and soon, when 2025 recedes into the past and is no longer the now, it will feel to me as if she’s being left behind. As the minutes and days and months and years continue to move forward, she will be left further behind, back in 2025.

As long as it’s still 2025 it’s sort of like I’m still near her, that she’s still a part of everything. This is still her present; she’s not just a relic of the past.

But that is quickly coming to an end, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it. Trying to hold on to time has always been a losing proposition for me, but the stakes were never this high.

I don’t want Adrianna to be a relic of the past. I don’t want to let this year go away yet.

 

Talking to Her Sideways

There was a time period during the last four or so years when Adri started getting distant and I hardly ever saw her even though she lived just 15 minutes away. It was for a variety of reasons, and it broke my heart, and I did keep trying to fix that but kept getting shot down by her.

Nothing was working, so I eventually tried making some oblique posts, talking to her sideways, in an effort to try to get her to understand that what we were losing together could never be reclaimed, and that tomorrow was not guaranteed.

This was one such Facebook post from three years ago today, ostensibly about me wishing that I could spend just one more Christmas with my grandparents, and of trying to hold on and appreciate time spent together.  But of course I was really talking about her:

December 26, 2022

I miss gram and gramp every day, and especially at Christmas time. I wish I could spend one more Christmas with my grandparents.

You think those times will last forever, but they don't. You want to relive them all and hold on to them, wishing that you never wasted a single moment out of spite or miscommunication or stubbornness or inconvenience or ill-timing, but you can't.

All you can do is to try to appreciate the time you have in the now, and hope as was the case with my grandparents that you've created relationships and connections with others that are meaningful and important, knowing that time just moves forward, it does not wait around and allow do-overs.

Eventually, it becomes too late; moments lost can never be reclaimed.

I'm thankful for all the moments with my grandparents that help make me who I am today.

I thought it was too on the nose and obvious, I thought it would irritate her, but she didn't seem to realize that I wasn't really talking about my grandparents (her great grandparents), but rather that I was really talking about her, us, our time lost. She replies about missing gram, too, but doesn't seem to understand who my real intended audience was.

We never did spend an actual Christmas Eve or Day together again after covid, but at least the following year (2023) and last year I was able to bring them presents and watch her and the boys open them at her apartment, even if it wasn't on the actual day.

I'd unfortunately given up trying to make that happen.

Since her hospitalization in early 2024 I did see them more often; it was becoming more regular, finally, and I believe that this Christmas, if she'd survived, she would have come over on Eve and Day like the great Christmases of the past.

In the end, of course, that was not to be, but I did get to spend Eve and Day with the boys, together with cookies and carols and family.

Just not my daughter.

I wish I could have gotten through to her, here. I wish I could have tried harder and longer these last four years. Especially since it turned out to be our last four years together, I wish I could have made that time special and normal and comfortable and peaceful.

I know that I couldn't make that happen alone, that she had some responsibility, too, but I wish I could have taken it all on for her. And me. And us.

Peephole

 

I am still struggling daily, hourly, with coming to terms with the reality that my daughter is no longer here and never will be. It’s the unthinkable and unacceptable true reality that forces itself into my brain uninvited multiple times per day, hour. It’s feels like a kind of torture. I imagine it’s akin to how they sleep-deprive prisoners with loud music and bright lights, but sadistically make it worse by letting them drift off to sleep for a second or two before then waking them up again with a slap to the face or dousing them with cold water.

This on-again, off-again state sprinkled with small moments of teasingly tantalizing sleep that is then yanked away again and again is worse than just totally depriving them of sleep and letting them become used to that state. Not allowing them to adapt to their situation but rather remind them of what they’re missing is multiple times worse on their psyche.

That’s what it feels like to me. My brain will allow myself to forget or at least not think about this reality for small swaths of time only to then have that temporary respite brought to a shattering end with a flood of thoughts, images, and memories that smack me down like a bucket of cold water or slap to the face, loudly proclaiming that Adrianna is gone forever, seeming to punish me for forgetting for a moment.

When I “remember” I often try to soften the blow a bit by imagining she’s still here, in the space that I currently occupy in this house. I can see her in the kitchen, on the stairway, in the entryway, in what was her room. I can hear her clearly as well, always talking to the boys the way she did.

Sometimes in the middle of the night when it’s bad I will go downstairs to the entryway where I can usually sense and feel her presence the strongest. I sit on the stairs and watch and listen to her talking to her boys, looking at me with her big bright eyes and smiling. It breaks my heart but is almost real.

Whenever they’d come over for a visit I’d start to get impatient waiting for their arrival and would park myself in front of the door in the entryway, peering out through the peephole full of anticipation for her car to pull up. When it finally did it would take all my self-control to not open the door immediately. Instead I’d wait for what seemed an eternity for them to get out of the car and start towards our door. The boys usually running with Adri watching them and smiling.

I’ve found myself these last couple of days going to the door and staring out that same peephole, hoping and waiting for Adrianna to arrive, allowing myself this little fiction, letting myself pretend that, any minute now, the car will pull up and the doors finally open and she’ll start walking up the cobblestone path to my door.

This time I won’t wait. I’ll open the door as soon as she pulls up and I’ll run out to her and hug her and never let her go. 

Adrianna's Memorial Book

 

Here's a page-by-page video of the book I made for Adri's memorial for those who didn't get to see it.

Adri and Ashley and Brandy

I got lucky when I moved into an apartment in the early 90s and shared an entryway with Nicole and Brenda. Brenda had two daughters, Ashley and Brandy who were about Adri's age, and for years afterwards, through several moves, they remained friends.

It was great for me. I was her dad, and she was definitely a daddy's girl when she was with me, but I always worried that she'd feel isolated when she was with me. These girls made sure that wasn't the case.

They swam and did each other's hair and nails. Played video games, rode bikes and just hung out. It made it easier for me, took some of the worry away that I wasn't giving her everything she needed.

I mean, I did try to do her hair and such, but there are some skills that other little girls are just better at.

Last week I learned that Ashley and Brandy's mother passed away, and though I had been thinking about them a lot these last six months, I made a concerted effort this time to find them and thank them for all they did for my daughter, as well as give them my condolences.

Both girls are of course now full-gown women with children of their own. I'm extremely sorry for the loss of their mother and hope they and their families get through this as well as they possibly can.

And I want to thank them again for being such an important part of my daughter's early life. You guys made her life just a little brighter.

Newbery Books

Adri's Newbery books 

 

As I’ve previously discussed, books and reading, both fiction and non-fiction, has always been a big part of my life and it was for Adrianna as well. One of the things I would collect for her were Newbery Medal books.

This award has been given annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” since 1922. The other big award for children’s literature is the Caldecott Medal which is awarded annually for the most distinguished picture book, and together these are the most prestigious awards for children’s books in the US.

Ever since she was born, I’d hunt through the stacks of children’s books at Half Price Books across the country, at first in Austin but later in Dallas, San Antonio, Madison, Wisconsin… anywhere where there were books, I’d be searching with my printed-out list of Newbery books and cross them off as I found them for her. It was a never-ending treasure hunt as those who scour used book stores in a similar manner can surely relate.

Later, when I actually worked at HPB it was almost like cheating, because I’d get to see all the books even before they were sorted, priced, and shelved as they came through the buy area. Plus, I got a 50% discount. It sort of took the fun out of the hunt… but only sort of.

The thrill of the hunt was a secondary to actually sharing them with Adri, of course. Before she could read, I’d read them to her, and later she’d devour them herself. There were other great books that were not Newberys, obviously, such as the entire oeuvres of Judy Blume, Louise Fitzhugh, and countless others, and we enjoyed those books as well, but you could never go wrong with blindly buying a Newbery. The ALSC knew what they were doing.

Once Adri was about 13 or 14, however, I started to slow down. In the end I’d found 56 Newberys for her, which was over 70% of all Newbery books extant at that time.

I had built her a desk/hutch/bookcase when she was about eight which had three adjustable shelves as well as a fold-down door that served as writing surface. She loved it and always wanted to bring it over to her apartment for the boys, but there was never room. I put all the Newbery books on those shelves for her, as well as some of the other special books and of course “Where the Wild Things Are” front and center.

When we purchased our house almost twenty years ago, we made one of the bedrooms hers, and the bookcase/desk lived in a corner. Years later when we converted her room to a guest room, the bookcase remained, waiting for a time when Adrianna would have room for it in her own house. That of course never happened, but now that room has many remembrances of Adri, the collection of Newberys on her desk as well as an entire wall of photos of her with her boys.

I took this picture today of the Newberys, a gloomy overcast rainy morning that is brightened up just a bit by all the spines of the volumes on the shelves and memories of our time together reading them. Books that were the pinnacle of children’s literature the year they were released. Books that brought joy to my daughter as well as myself. Books that live on for others even though she does not… yet another melancholy happy-sad reminder of my daughter.

Six Months

Today is six months without her, which is crushing but also just the start. Soon it will be a year, then five years, 20 years, then a lifetime. I can’t… I just can’t get myself to accept that or come to peace with it.

In some respects, though, we may have received a bonus year of Adrianna. As I’ve discussed before, she had a heart event in February of 2024 that required a week in ICU when it was touch and go as to whether she’d survive. But, against many odds she somehow did survive, and we all breathed a small sigh of (temporary) relief.

In many ways, however, Adri never fully recovered. During the ensuing 15 months prior to the finality of May 22 of this year she told me many times that she felt different. I asked for clarification, but she had a hard time putting it into words:

“I don’t know, dad, I just feel weird. Like out of synch with life. I feel like I shouldn’t be here right now… I think I was supposed to die last February. Sometimes I feel like I did die, and this isn’t real.”

I still didn’t fully understand, but that was the best she could do to explain what she meant. I did know that this was concerning, this overly fatalistic and deterministic view of her existence.

Other times, many times, when she’d see an old picture or video of herself from 15 or 20 years ago, she’d say something like,

“I miss that person. I miss myself. I don’t know what happened to her. I wish I could get her back.”

I tried to be there for her, but was aware that sometimes it’s not easy (or helpful or healthy or productive) to talk to a family member about such things, especially one as empathetic as Adri who didn’t want to worry anyone.

She had Medicare and sometimes Medicaid (depending on the age of her boys at a given time,) but as we all know these programs, especially the ones dependent on the given state providing most of the help, are woefully insufficient in their support of mental health care. Let’s just say that Texas especially isn’t really concerned with such things.

Still, she’d somehow find a therapist who’d accept her insurance after a lot of work and effort with web searches, phone calls, visits, and emails. But it was limited care, at best once a month for an hour, and then she had to get there. Occasionally she’d find teletherapy and be able to do it from home, which was easier, if perhaps a bit less effective.

However, without exaggeration, at least half the time the therapist would cancel a day or two before, and she’d miss that entire month… and they’d never be able to reschedule before her next month.

And worse, about once a year the therapist would opt to leave the Medicare system entirely and she’d have to start the hunt all over again.

At one point last year after seeing this happen again and again and again, I told her that we’d pay for therapy, without relying on insurance. We’d pay for a monthly session and she could still do what she could with Medicare/caid. She was worried about having to make us spend money, so I told her we could use some of the school money we still had waiting for her if it made her feel better, and that we could replace that later.

I told her she wouldn’t be able to finish school, anyway, until she got herself healthy. It was the same theme that I always tried to make clear to her, that she had to make herself healthy in the present before she could help others, and that included her future self.  The old “Parents, put your oxygen mask on first before doing so for your child” idea that you hear prior to every takeoff in an airplane.

But it never happened.

“I feel funny, dad, like I already died and shouldn’t be here.”

She said that the last time just a month before it became true.

Did we really get a bonus year… did reality somehow break in February of 2024 and Adri sneaked in an extra 15 months?

All I know is that I’d have used any cheat code to make sure she was still here, and I’d have given anything if she could have felt in synch with her world and found her place in it, living happily ever after.

 

Out to Lunch

Adri loved food… she loved trying new and interesting items and ethnic cuisines, enjoyed trying out new recipes, exploring new flavors and sharing all of this with her family, even when she was little.

She was an adventurous eater from a young age, willing to try almost anything, even things that many if not most children would frown at:  anchovies, blue cheese, olives, escargot, lamb, rabbit, weird hybrid fruit occasionally found at Central Market, and even chicken feet once when she was out with her nonna and a client at an Asian restaurant.

She’d be anxious to prepare meals as well, and in those days when I had not much money I’d teach her how to frugally stretch a dollar at the grocery store and to be creative with what you found in your pantry.

One day when she was about seven, she insisted on making dinner for the two of us. She used a box of mac n’ cheese, some to-go hot sauce packets from Taco Bell, a can of diced tomatoes and garlic and onion powder to prepare it. Other than starting the stove for her, she did it all, and though I may have questioned some of her ingredient choices silently, I let her do it all.

She was one who would definitely believe that one of the great joys of life and made it worth living was the food.

However, her eating disorder as well as meager income level as an adult made it difficult for her to actually enjoy food personally anymore. She couldn’t afford to buy proper ingredients on a regular basis, but still would scrounge and save to buy and prepare her family duck one thanksgiving, for example. She still got enjoyment by the planning and prep, but the actual eating: not so much.

Still, as is usually the case with people like her, food and meals were always on her mind. At least 80% of her Facebook and Instagram feeds would consist of food related topics: recipes, new restaurant openings, grocery store ads for some special, food memes, etc.

She’d often tag me and say stuff like “You need to try this!!”, or “This place sounds really good, you should go there!!”, or “remember when you made this for me?”, or “I really, really want to make this for the boys”, etc.

She’d live a great deal of her culinary adventures now vicariously through me, but I wished and hoped that she’d be able to enjoy some of this herself. I’d buy her cookbooks, usually of the type that showed you how to cook healthy meals on an extreme budget, but also sometimes just cookbooks with beautiful photographs, since at that point she enjoyed looking more than partaking. I’d bring over special ingredients that I occasionally bought specifically for her, but also extras I had at home. She’d be excited to receive them, and text me asking for recipe ideas in general or specific info on the item.

She would save money for the occasional treat, of course, such as kababs at a small hole-in-the-wall spot (that we later used to cater her memorial service) or some sushi plate for Wes and herself, or a hibachi dinner out for the boys’ birthday… but I know it was always less than she wished she could do.

Cindy and I subscribe to Blue Apron, a home meal prep service, and we get one box a week with three meals in it, mainly because we both got tired of trying to think of new things to prepare each week. The meals are proportioned correctly as well, and also makes more financial sense at times. We don’t have to buy a $15 jar of romesco sauce for just one tablespoon, for example. The meal kit has one tablespoon in a packet for you.

Once Blue Apron accidently sent an extra meal, so I brought it over to Adri. She was thrilled and loved everything about it. She and Wesley had a great time preparing it for dinner that night, but of course she didn’t allow herself to be constrained by some dogmatic recipe instruction card that came with the meal: no, she said she made changes on the fly and said everyone loved the results. She told me that maybe one day if she was “rich” she would love to do that more often.

One of the more common things she shared in her feeds was for a particular type of seafood restaurant that has become popular as of late, at least in the DFW area. These places put everything in a large plastic bag and steam it. There will be potatoes and corn on the cob in there, and you choose the shellfish (clams, crawfish, different variety of crab, shrimp, etc.) as well as sauce and spice level.

The photos always look fantastic and delicious, but of course they’re expensive, usually starting around $25 and going up. There was no way Adri could try any of them, especially since the rest of her family probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it and she wasn’t about to spend that much  money on just herself.

Looking at and posting the photos on Facebook would have to do.

I saw these in her feed, and one day decided I was going to take her to one as a surprise. I asked Stephen first if he could watch the boys for a couple of hours, and then went to pick up Adrianna. All I told her I was taking her to lunch, but not where.

She was hesitant; she didn’t want to leave the boys or Stephen, but we all finally convinced her and off we went, just she and I, just like the old days.

As we made the 15-minute drive (because nothing is close in Dallas) I could tell she was excited. I looked at her next to me in the passenger seat and remembered all the road trips we’d taken, all the time in the car driving from one class to the next in the summers, or to the library, or Six Flags and the Discovery Zone, and the trips to the airport. Drives that were filled with laughter and music and heart-to-heart talks about boys and life and dreams and the future.

I was a bit overcome in the moment, realizing for the thousandth time how quickly time passes, and how that little girl all those years ago so excited to be going somewhere was now an adult with a family of her own, and that such moments together were getting rarer and rarer. Like most parents, I suppose, part of me wished I could have held on to that little girl forever, but another part was excited to see what her future would bring as she created and maintained a life with her own family.

I was just glad to be able to share such moments with her as rarer as they had become, realizing that it was the best of both worlds. Looking at her that day next to me in the car I knew she thought the same.

When we got there and she saw what it was her excitement overflowed. She of course kibitzed and fretted about how expensive it was (this is what I get for teaching and modeling frugality to her all those years), but that was all forgotten when she broke into the bag of seafood and the steam and associated aromas escaped into the dining area. She smiled and started in.

It was a good day, and as it turned out our last shared happy moment that was just the two of us.

I wish she could have enjoyed food guilt-free, with enough financial security to share wonderful food and meals and experiences more often with her family, but I know she did the best she could. I know the times she was able to do this for herself and her family were some of the highlights of her life. Considering how much the boys talk about the meals she made and the food adventures she shared with them, I know they thought the same.

The Walk and Talk

A couple of times a year Cindy has a busy season for two to three weeks, and she’s in the middle of the busiest right now, requiring her to go to the office seven days a week for 16-to-18-hour days. No one is happy about it, but I try to make lemons out of lemonade (or whatever) by cooking stuff for dinner she doesn’t like (lamb, scallops, etc.), listening to music she doesn’t care for really loudly, and now, my lunchtime walk around the neighborhood alone where I “converse” with Adrianna.

It's a walk and talk in typical Aaron Sorkin fashion, though there’s just one of us. I actually talk out loud, not in my head, and I don’t have to worry about looking like a lunatic: the iniquitousness of people conversing on their cellphones in public wearing earphones has brought one good result, I guess. No one gives me a second glance.

I walk as quickly as I can, trying to maintain a mile pace of under 16 minutes, just enough so it’s a bit labored to carry on my conversation. I do stop if I near a lawn service doing someone’s yard, a dog walker, or someone checking their mail, however.

I talk to Adri, pretending she can hear me, but knowing she can’t. I sometimes will try to call out some omnipotent being as well, asking Him or Her for some answers, also knowing that there is no Him or Her regardless of the capitalization of their pronoun. But I let myself pretend for the twenty minutes or so it takes to circumnavigate my route, anyway. I allow myself for a bit to imagine or hope that just maybe there is something else, somewhere else, even if it’s outside of our own time or space, where consciousnesses of our loved ones still exist. Still are. Still be.

Of course, I spend most of the time apologizing to her. I apologize for her having to grow up as a child of divorce, spending the better part of her life in two different places. I let her know how important she was to me, and how almost every single life decision I’ve made since she was a part of it was about her, and that this is exactly how I wanted it to be.

I apologize for not being able to either ease her life more or better prepare her for it herself. I tell her that I know she knows I tried, but I’m sorry none the less. I tell her I’m sorry if I did too much or too little, and that I was constantly trying to get that balancing act correct.

I apologize to her for not trying to force the issue more these last four years or so, and for making her work for everything and not making it easier for her sometimes when I could have. Instead, I’d keep the safety net I’d always provide in case of emergency unstated, unmentioned…  hoping that she’d figure stuff out for herself. Trying to make her 100% self-sufficient so she’d feel proud of her life and accomplishments and not feel so helpless or dependent on others.

I apologize to her that if instead this simply added more stress or made her feel like I didn’t care and that she was alone.

I remind her how I always used to tell her, “I saw you being born!” and how sorry I am that I couldn’t be with her when she died, holding her hand and trying to bring her some peace, letting her know she wasn’t alone.

I also tell her that I was always proud of her, for trying so hard and overcoming so many obstacles and never giving up when yet another roadblock or disaster came her way. I tell her that I hope she is at peace now, outside time and space, and let her know that she was and is loved, and that we will all make sure her boys thrive.

This is usually when I have my aside with who I’ll think of as “God.” I’ve let myself to have a conversation with my daughter who is no longer here, so why not that? I’ll allow myself that once a day or so, to buy into the whole Judeo-Christian concept of God. What’s it going to hurt?

So I tell this God to please take care of her, to please bathe her in light, please surround her with love.

And then I chastise this Being for taking out any sins of the father on the daughter, that no matter what I’ve done or haven’t done, I’ve tried to do what’s right even if I’ve failed sometimes, and that if they punished my daughter in order to punish me how dare they. Take any beefs that have with me out on me, not my daughter and her family.

Then I shake my head at my folly here for talking to some imaginary being, and then go back to talking to my daughter, like that’s different somehow.

I apologize again for not being able to offer up enough to ensure that she survived the challenges of her life, and tell her how much I miss her.

And that I love her.

And that I’m so, so, so, very sorry.