dear dad.

After you passed, I got a lot of different perspectives on how to deal. Most of it only hurt me instead of helping me, but that's life.I get it. Nobody knows what to say to a 20 year old girl who lost a father she spent her whole life trying to understand. For a while I really don't think my brain or my heart let me believe you actually left me. My heart told me, "he couldn't leave you right now. Nope. Not as you're just becoming close for the first time since you were a child. he would never leave you like this." And my brain tricked me into thinking he was still just 60 miles and a phone call away. I guess that trick is still being played because most mornings I wake up expecting a missed call from you only now I want to call you and tell you I love you instead of putting it off for days like I did when you were still here. Despite all the bad advice I got, a few people really pulled me up with these: "It comes in waves" and "some days are harder than others." It still hurts like hell and it's harder than anything else. But those are the waves and these feelings are only this intense some days.

As long as my memory serves me, I'll never forget what happened that night when I came home from the hospital, after I had just watched you take your last breath and your chest heaved up and down until your life was gone.I don't believe in god or signs or some fairy tale afterlife. But man, did the idea of you shake me up that night dad.

I was upstairs in my bedroom in royal oak with tymm, trying to figure out how to fall asleep. It was after 5 am and I was in bed with my glasses off, exhausted in complete darkness. Out of nowhere that orange light began to glow. He jumped up to see where it was coming from. "Do you see that jess?" I could see it even with my broken eyeballs. It was coming from some power cord on the floor and without my glasses on it lit up my entire world for a few seconds as tymm held the cord up in front of me, holding one end of it in each hand to show me it was not plugged into anything and it was still glowing. How the power light on that cord was glowing in his hands that night after you died I guess I'll never know. But there are two things I do know. You were an electrician and you didn't say goodbye to me. You were good at most things you did, but you were great at two things. Making lights turn on and making sure you always told me you loved me before you said goodbye. And for the rest of my life I'll believe that's exactly what you did that night in my bedroom in royal oak. Two days later I got a tattoo of a latern to keep me sane.It's worked. All I have left are memories and for the rest of my life I will search for moments full of you. I loved you endlessly, my handsome dad. If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied and illuminate the "no" on their vacancy signs--if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, I'll follow you into the dark.