25 Year Anniversery

How does one choose a pivotal moment, a life changing event that rocks you to your very core of existence? Can you?
Is it possible to choose one moment that makes or breaks a person’s being and can they ever recover from that experience and go on to lead their life with true meaning after that.
Can you pick a moment in time where you would return, change the course of events, therefore changing your history or even your destiny? Would you?
Was that moment so profound that it changed the person you became or can you choose who you are regardless through strength and life’s lessons?
So many questions so few answers in life and death.
Today marks the Anniversary of such a moment 25 years ago today I lost my Dad.
25 years I can’t put this figure into perspective in my mind its way too surreal it’s so long ago and yet that moment that day, is etched into my mind like carvings in stone, which time will never erase.
There is nothing I can truly put into words that can best describe my dad, my daddy, shit this is bizarre in so many ways to try and describe a man that I put on a pedestal as the epitome of what a man is and should be. He was as loving as any person I have ever met and I have never met a man with such Love for his baby girl whom I was so very blessed to be. All though I was not of his blood, he adored me as if I was the only girl on the planet and to him I was. Everything I did was only to see his smiling eyes, to have him scoop me up in his strong arms and for him to tell me he loved me. I miss that secure feeling. I miss how I felt when he held me close to his heart.
He was gentle but strong and he wasn’t ashamed to let people know how he felt. I came first in his eyes and he in mine. I have had trouble over the years finding anyone who could measure up to the type of person he was.
Is it that just that I only remember the good times I think not? I remember being smacked once yes only once but it was a goodin and well without details I deserved it. My mum knew of my bond with my dad as did everyone. I was always on his shoulders or by his side no matter where we were, that was my spot and I thought I couldn't get any safer than right there. He even mowed the lawn with me riding along as the sweat poured down his forehead. My mum was so sure of his love for me that at 5.30 am on the 24th of August 1992 my mum woke me up with a jolt and a panic stricken look of despair on her face. Her exact words were Loo Loo I can’t wake your dad up, hop out of bed hurry he’ll wake up for you; he’s going to be late for work.
I got out of bed trying to make sense of what was happening. I was the same age as my youngest daughter is now and I went into their room to see my dad, lying in bed, looking as though he was asleep, he was warm but he didn’t open his eyes.
I got on the bed and shook him whispering for him to get up, nothing. I panicked then. I shook him I beat his chest tears rolling down my cheeks. I told him it wasn’t funny anymore and he had to get up because mum was crying and he was scaring me. He lay their motionless as I cried and punched his chest.
Needless to say my daddy didn’t even wake up for me. I went out to my mum as she looked at me with a glimmer of hope in her eyes and she asked, even though she knew the answer to her own question. I told her she had to ring Nana then took over waking up my brother telling him the news taking him in to say goodbye and explaining that dad was going to heaven to be with the angels. At seven it was difficult for him and he just couldn't grasp the gravity of the situation. We didn't have a phone back then and mum had to go down the road to the neighbors. It was the worst day of my life and for my mum a devastating blow that she has barely recovered from to this day.

His funeral was huge there were 3 greyhound buses and well over 600 hundred people at his funeral. He was a loved man by many, no more than by his family and especially me. I was his little girl, his little maggot and he was my dad.
I miss him so badly it still hurts. I know he would be very proud of his grand children and I hope of me. His memory will live on always in my heart.

So today I will light a candle in his honor as a symbol of my never ending Love until he holds me once again and I feel the security of his embrace.