Did you know? I feel like you must have known or else you wouldn’t have let me go. You wouldn’t have let me walk downstairs into the spare bedroom, newly refurbished and sterile smelling, and kiss you goodbye. You wouldn’t have let me climb into my friend’s car and leave that night to visit my future college. You surely must have felt it coming because that is the kind of person you were, Dad.

The final months of my dad’s life were filled with the stenches of grief. Everywhere, people were grieving as my dad tried to make the best of things. All I wanted was to one day wake up from the present nightmare that was occurring. I wanted to wake up to my dad’s voice again and to be able to hug him without fear of breaking his bones. Yet, every morning that summer when I would walk downstairs into the living room before cross country practice he would still be sitting there, sick and limp. His eyes still had their fire, but his body was giving up on him.

People grieve in such strange ways. My way of grieving was very private and I refused to cry or show emotion in front of my family and friends. I didn’t want my dad to see me hurt because he was hurting, just as he didn’t want me to hurt because he was hurting. I was entering my senior year and so many new and exciting things were happening alongside the painful endings of my best friend’s life right before my eyes. This was a time of very confusing emotions, because on one continuum I was excited to be the heck out of high school in less than a year, but on the other continuum I was deeply broken and hurting because I knew that my dad would not live to see me graduate, go off to college, race my first college meet, and someday get married.

Throughout this inner turmoil and overwhelming feelings of guilt I felt for wanting to be a high school senior and attend the dances, sunrises, rallies, and homecoming week, people surrounding me were bombarding me with additional guilt. “Your dad is dying and you’re going to __?”, “How dare you go out with your friend to that concert while Dad is sick,” “Why aren’t you crying? Don’t you care that your dad only has weeks to live?” You think I didn’t know that? Do you honestly think that my intentions were to be avoidant and self-centered?

Growing up and until the last day my dad breathed, he was my absolute best friend. I told him everything, even more things than I told my best friend of 14 years. To see your dad dying is hard. Losing your dad AND the person you would confide in, spend every free moment with, and love more than any other person in the world is awful. So when people would try and guilt trip me into spending more time with him would rip me apart and make me feel like the most disgusting and mean-spirited person in the world. And those comments made to me in those final months to this day still stick to me. The wounds those words dug into my heart have left an everlasting scar.

So why did you let me go visit Jessup, Dad? Everyone told me for weeks not to go. Everyone made me feel guilty for going. Yet, you were so persistent that I go. I think you had two reasons: you knew that Jessup was the place that God wanted me, and you didn’t want me to be there when you passed away. Because the next morning of my visit to Jessup I woke up to a text from Mom saying you had died. You waited until I was gone to die. I felt relieved that your suffering was over and at the same time devastated because I wanted you to know how grateful I was that you let me visit Jessup. I wanted to come home and sit by your bed and tell you about how I knew in my heart that God had big plans for me at Jessup and that you were right Dad. Yet, I couldn’t do that because you probably already knew that God has big plans for me at Jessup. You knew I would find my family and reconnect with Jesus here. Why else would you have let your little girl travel and hour away without you and stay with total strangers?

So thank you, Dad. Thank you for always believing, trusting, and supporting me until the very end. Even though you are no longer here on earth, I will always be your little girl and now you don’t have to miss a single one of my races because you got the best seat in the house up there with Jesus watching over me.

Time has a funny way of moving. Actually, it didn’t occur to me what today was until I dated this article. While 9/11 is a day in which thousands of Americans lost their families and grieved together, it's also a day that I grieve. Yesterday marks the last day that I spoke to you. And today marks the day you breathed your last breath two years ago. Time moves so fast. Two years has flown by, yet it all seems so fresh and hurts just as bad as it did the morning I received that text.