The greatest of these is love

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
and never stops at all.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

My dad, who died in 2004, would have had his birthday this week.

This week, and the week that he died in are always difficult for me. Some are worse than others, though I am never quite sure why.

I am happy and glad that our oldest daughters knew him.

I am sad beyond measure that Clementine will never know him. She would have adored him, and he would have adored her.

Dan met him only once. I wish Dan could have gotten to know him when my dad was healthy and whole.When he was himself. He would have loved Dan, and Dan would have loved him. They have a lot in common.

We must accept finite disappointment, 

but never lose infinite hope.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.~

Every day, I miss my dad, and mourn him.

What you can't understand until you have lost someone important, is that the feeling of loss will never leave you. It isn't until after you lose someone that you come to understand what it means to mourn. 

It gets better.

It gets worse.

It never goes away.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
~ Matthew 5:4 ~

Eventually, you come to confront the elemental understanding that it isn't supposed to ever go away, because it has become a part of you in the way that the person you loved was a part of you. Until they are a part of you again, you will feel the loss.

After that, at some point, you come to understand that it is good that the feelings of loss never leaves you.

You come to understand that you will always mourn while you are here and they are not.

You will mourn and miss and hope and have faith until you do see them again.

from here^

But now remain faith, hope, and love: these three. 

The greatest of these is love.

~1 Corinthians 13:13~