Dear Dad,

I miss you. I've been thinking about Father's Days past and how we'd make meatloaf, mashed potatoes and broccoli (because mom insisted on a vegetable) every year. It was your favorite meal. We'd get you a pair of dockers or a white shirt or socks or a tie EVERY YEAR and EVERY YEAR you would act surprised and so happy. Even the years you picked out your own clothes.
Then there were the years the little girls went though the phase of making gigantic signs from rolls of news print, screaming HAPPY FATHER'S DAY in awkward print with the letters getting smaller and smaller toward the end, since the girls were spatially challenged and ran out of room...
How I love you, Daddy. All the Saturdays spent learning to drive in the boonies. All the late hours spent at work making sure we had enough to get by. That one barefoot walk, on the way to the canyon with the wind howling and our feet freezing on the blacktop, when you told me you loved me more than anything and I meant the world to you, but not with those exact words.
The bedtime stories that came straight from your own childhood, brought to life with your amazing oratorical skills.  I wish I could tell the "Shimmy/snake" story with half your pizazz. The way the entire world seemed to love you, to bask in your presence, even if no one outside our little corner of the state knew you those who did all loved you (except that one guy, but you showed him!) and trusted and admired you. People still tell me how amazing and strong you were in life.
And I remember how scared you were for every surgery or treatment, but also how hopeful and excited you were that "This would be the ONE". The long months that were bone marrow transplants, and finally giving up and coming home, knowing the end would be wickedly brutal, and long. And it was. Just awful.

I got so mad when you wouldn't just give up! After all hope was gone I begged you to let go, but you would not, because you didn't want us to grow up thinking giving up was OK. How I hated and admired that stubborn determination of yours, especially at the end when you couldn't eat and weighed less than mom.

Heavenly Father must really love me, to have sent me to be your daughter. You are one amazing man, Dad.
Thank you for your love, your guidance, showing me how to love the Lord and serve Him, be a parent and most of all, for believing in me. And thanks for trusting me when I got engaged after two weeks. It worked out. He's a great Dad, just like you.
Save me a spot in Heaven. I'd like to live next door, if that's OK. :)