Last Father’s Day- I made waffles in our waffle maker with whipped cream and heart shaped strawberries.  I tried to make your coffee really good grinding fresh beans and using the French press- I think I’ve gotten much better at it since you died.

This must be numbness.  The day I’ve been dreading since I first realized I’d go through this horrible cycle of seasons and holidays is tomorrow and I feel nothing.  I try to process what has been lost here, but there’s definitely something blocking me from even really thinking about your death the way I normally do.  Instead, I think very pragmatic thoughts- you died, this is the only life Audrey will have and know- yes, it’s a loss, but this is her life- the one she got.  Just like this is my life.  You loved her, she loved you.  You tragically died.  That’s all.

I do think your relationship with her was so much simpler than ours.  It was just mutual love and adoration, not muddled by years of learning how to love a person who was once a stranger.  She is your flesh and blood.  She will always be your daughter.  They say I’m no longer your wife.

And Father’s Day- well it’s mostly a commercial holiday- one they don’t celebrate in Korea.  I was incapacitated on your birthday and the anniversary of the day we met- Audrey’s birthday is also hard.  But I am focused on her loss of you and yours of her, daily.  Tomorrow will be more of the same.

Today I have a recollection of a few weeks before our wedding day, 2004.  I had just gone to pick up my wedding band from the jeweler in the diamond district and I was showing it to some friends at our “kinship group”- that’s what our small group/Bible study was called back then.  You were there too.  I remember so specifically sharing with the women there that I was afraid you were going to die- something was going to happen to you.  One friend told me I probably didn’t feel I deserved this wonderful blessing- marrying Dan, but that I needed to realize how much God loved me.  The women prayed for me on the floor in a small circle the way we did- that I wouldn’t have this irrational fear of Dan dying, and that I could truly enjoy my impending wedding day and marriage.  I can’t help wonder about it all now…