Happy Birthday Daddy

I’ve written many posts to you on your birthday since you took your life and granny’s heart. I knew you were going to kill yourself but one can never imagine how it feels when it actually happens. The pain doesn’t stop with the notification it continues with cleaning out the house, selling it, the insurance paperwork, and arranging a funeral, each one a painful step.

I chose to remember the memories we made before the divorce. I was 6.5 years old, mama took us to the lake, and we set on the picnic tables. She tells you’re leaving, my brother and I were shocked and very confused. It was so sad, the memory burned into my brain, we came home and you and gramps were driving off. We didn’t even get to say goodbye.

You loved her, never forgot about her and that’s why you had the divorce papers out on the table the day you died.

We would go to the convenience store and get a soda, back then all they had was glass bottles and you had to make a deposit on the bottle. You received your money back when you brought the bottle in. We sit in the car and listened to the radio just singing our hearts while we drank our soda. 

I remember when you had a part-time job at the grocery store and you would bring home the dented cans. I would sneak out of bed and help you put everything in the pantry. 

You loved Hank Williams Sr. and Elvis, we would sing our hearts out to the albums night after night. 

I don’t have many good memories, and if I do, they are memories of us going clubbing when I was nine years old. The parties you took me to, they were all inappropriate for a child. It only got crazier as I got older.

I hope you’ve found peace and the pain is gone. 

Melinda