What Was Real

                                                           (me and my father, 1993)

I know you tried. Maybe you just couldn't bear the love you felt for me.Maybe you just didn't think you knew how to love, or how to apologize or start over or forgive..... Maybe you felt you were doing the right thing by not being in my life in your final years...whatever your reasons, I forgive you.
What is real is what I will keep alive in my mind. Images of your smile...remnants of your voice in my head and how I can almost hear you call me Daddy's little girl... falling asleep on your lap, a newly single woman with another baby girl asleep inside of me...comforted by finally being a reflection in your eyes again after so long. Why we just couldn't get it together, you and I...I don't know. Forgive me for not trying harder.

And you know, the pain isn't any less just because we were "estranged" for some years.....my heart just aches at the thought of it. You are gone.......forever. No more second chances. No more hope that one day..........one day............
I have some photographs of you smiling at me and I have the memory of your huge rough hands that enveloped mine and the way you ate pickles and always told me you kept my tattered little smiling girl picture in your tool box for 20 years.....
There are memories I choose to keep and those I will simply discard. What good is negativity in this world; in this life? I know all to well that life is too short for it. Too short for petty things that never matter in the beauty that is this life. This one life...
I know you loved me in your own way...
and I can feel your deep brown eyes watching me, again my fiercest protector...with your wallet chain and your pocket knife and your quick temper and your leather boots.
No regrets, old man. No regrets, ok?
I'll always be your little girl.