It's New Year's Eve.  Not a very happy day for me.  My father died on New Year's Eve two years ago.  I can't remember if last year's anniversary was as difficult as this one is.  I suppose it was worse.  A lot of that time is a sad haze.  

 I cried myself to sleep last night.  I started thinking about so many moments during that difficult time.  I wish I could go back and turn to him and tell him how much I loved him.  How much I love him.  I wish those heart piercingly painful moments wouldn't float through my mind.  I wish he was here, alive and performing all his old fashioned routines around his house.  He was a creature of hard work and habit.  I wish that I would hear my phone ring and pick it up and hear his soft voice telling me to come over and have dinner and take his car.  It isn't about the car or the meal.. It is just about his love and insistent care.  I wish I had been a better daughter for him. 

I just want to try and get through this time and try and make it something positive.  I realise that I'm very much like him.  But I think the main difference is that he was a person of action.  He made his own life through hard work.  He did what had to be done and he raised and supported a large family.  He worked and worked and worked.  And I think that I took that forgranted.  Or let it remain unacknowledged.  But maybe he didn't need such acknowledgement from me.  I was his daughter, not his peer or his parent or sibling.  He didn't live his life for my approval or acknowledgement.  He loved me.  My darling father.