I miss Dad.

Sometimes it feels much longer than four years; each year since seems like ages ago, let alone thinking about four. (And yet it kind of surprises me, too. It didn't take much for me to get to this point, after all. I've just been living.)

Last year, I was living in KH. I put a picture up on a wall of him.
The year before that, I was in Scotland. That was a strange year. Only one or two people there really knew what that day meant to me. It was a bit surreal to miss him and think about him when I was on the other side of the ocean from where everything happened.
The year before that I was a freshman at Calvin. I didn't know what to do or what to think. But a lot of people knew and I think that helped. Something about telling your story makes it real and valid.

So I guess that's why I feel such a need to keep telling it. (Someday I'll actually get around to writing a book... but as Frederick Buecher warned me, you don't ever really stop needing to tell it.)

This year, I miss my dad with a different kind of grief. I miss him with a different kind of maturity. The last four years have given me distance to see him as an adult and not as a teenage girl. I have a deeper respect for him and for his life. I can appreciate, now, what others have told me about him without immediately reacting (internally) "but you never saw the other side of him; what the cancer did to him, what we saw at home."

But there IS that side of things too, to remember. I spent a long time this weekend re-reading my blog from those couple of years. It was like reading about someone else's life. I almost felt intrusive, actually, like I shouldn't have been reading such personal thoughts--and yet they had been mine. Shame? Not quite. But grief all the same. I read into my own depression, grateful to see me come out of it after a few months, worried when I saw myself start to slip again-- four years have given me objectivity and a sense of what others must have felt like watching me.

The pain is still real, however; I actually started to feel the same things that my blog captured back then. That was a bit scary. That was the point that I wanted to pull away from reading, but I couldn't resist. It was addicting, but I could feel myself spiraling downward with my past self. (I'm recovered, don't worry.) I was able to email many of those old posts to myself and archive them in a safer place, too, so that I have access to the poetry I'd written back then. That part was worth it.

I'm headed back to Holland today, to see my mentor and have lunch with her, and also to visit the cemetery. It will be a good thing for me to do, especially since I have today off for Academic advising. (As a side note, I'm officially registered for my student teaching placement!) It will be good to remember.


And there is so much to remember.


Finally, on a day like today, here's a hymn to hold close.


The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Refrain

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Refrain