Daddy's Girl

It's so hard for me to sit here and be at work knowing that my dad is here and staying at the house. My dad was supposed to start his 17 hour road trip to Texas from Ohio yesterday.

I had a bouquet of roses delivered to my office yesterday and peeking through the beautiful roses was my father's face!! That sneaky guy started driving on Tuesday and drove 16 hours straight! He arrived in Nac at 2 a.m. and stayed at the La Quinta that he and my mom stayed at one of the last times they visited together.

We discussed how his road trip would be 8-9 hours of driving and broken up into two days so he'd be well rested. Instead, after driving so long and seeing he only had 100 miles left to go he said he couldn't stop because it felt too near to stop.

He chose to be sneaky because for one he just couldn't wait one extra day to start his trip and two because he knew I'd be worried as soon as he hit the road. Of course, he knew too I would argue about him driving 16 hours straight.

Regardless, he is here and I'm so happy to see my dad. When I saw his face peering over those roses I was shocked and stupidly happy and his face just about broke into tears, which almost got me started too. We haven't see each other since my mom passed away in July 2011. We have been excited and anticipating for so long when he would do this trip to visit us. I think we have been just living our lives and trying to show strength to one another so we won't worry about each other with how big of an impact it has been to lose my mom and his wife.

I think it was hard to keep all those emotions bottled up when we saw each other. It was like a huge relief to be in each others company again, because we share the link to my mom. Maybe it takes away some of the sting and loneliness to be with each other.

I don't know if I'm quite explaining it all quite well enough, but it's just damn good to see my daddy.