Twice Blessed

well this site has been parked here on idle for quite some time. i've written many drafts but am so behind and not sure if i will update it entirely. but i needed a place to say something and so here it is. the few people that might see this, i think, will understand that while i haven't updated anyone in a long time, i needed to place THIS post here.

*deepak and grandpa in our garage in oregon, 2005*
*photo of mom the day she lost dad but gained a future apo*
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dad, you would have been 72 this year, feb 12th. i've been thinking of you alot lately. it seems to come in waves, where i will think of you so much over a period of time and then not so much and then quite a bit for awhile again. as hard as it is, i think it's easier for me. i am removed from walking into a home everyday where you no longer are. the reminders that you are gone do not surround me the way they do mom and john.

i had to write because the feelings are overwhelming and i need a place to set them down and organize them. even though growing up i always knew you probably wouldn't live to see me into my later adulthood, it doesn't make it any easier that you are not here. it's a huge part of why amit and i started our family straight away. his dad is your age too. i never knew my grandparents. i hope to live to know my own grandchildren well into their lives.

when you were alive we would jokingly insult one another saying "you got that from dad" or "that's what dad would do", now we gladly claim what traits of yours we might see in ourselves or in our children. "deepak is adventurous like grandpa", etc. whenever i watch law & order or without a trace, i think of how you enjoyed all those shows as i do. how you would always figure out who did it. how you would look at the time and say "it's the wrong guy, there's 35 minutes left, it's too early to solve the case now"

when i brush the kids hair over their ears or when amit moves my hair off of my shoulders, i think of how every week you would move my hair off of my shoulders as you'd stand behind me in line for communion at sacred heart. i knew it was coming and i dreaded it and you knew it and you would do it anyway and laugh.

i know in your own way, you see us. but there's so much i wish you had been around for me to share with you. deepak's success in school, having him read to you on the phone the way he does to mom. losing his first teeth, having a video of him air on cnn, his being in the school spelling bee, him rock climbing a huge wall with no fear - which of course made us think he might take after you and one day deep sea dive or sky dive as you did so many times.

i wish you could have heard from me that i was pregnant again, that we were having a girl. i wish you could have laid eyes on her. i felt your presence with us while i was in the last stage of labor. i kept hearing my name and would say "what is it" to amit and he would say he had said nothing. i wish she could have squeezed your finger just once. i wish i could have presented her to you with the surprise of her chosen middle name - sanjana georgette. the same way we surprised mom after deepak's birth, announcing him as deepak leod - in honor of her father, my lolo.

i wish that you could see her and deepak together, the big boy he has become, the loving and protective brother. she's half his weight, yet he can bend over and pick her up from the floor and properly carry her across a room, with ease. i wish you could see her mouth full of teeth, her cheeks that can not go unnoticed, her intensely dark and beautiful, brown eyes. i wish you could hear her and deepak laugh together and take turns screaming in the car - a favorite game of theirs.

i wish you could have come to oregon again, when it was snowing. i can't think of the last time in your life that you would have seen snow. you never thought a socal christmas was complete, it was too warm, too sunny. i remember how we wanted snow and you made icicles out of some liquid stuff that became hard, and you put them outside around our house. i remember how meticulously you put the lights up each year and the christmas city you would build inside. one year, despite being in the wheelchair already, you built the whole thing - just so deepak could see the lights and the ice skaters being pulled magnetically across the glass pond.

i'm sorry i didn't make it home in time to say goodbye to you. i was just half a day too late. you should have waited for me. mom said that you would have not wanted me to see you that way, but everyone got to say goodbye except for amit and & i. even tania and patricia saw you at the hospital. tania pretended to be your step daughter so that she could pester your doctor for inforomation mom was too tired to extract, in true tania form she got her answers, lol. you were gone so fast after we learned that you were so sick. i know that you were in pain and i am thankful that it was not stretched out over a long period of time.

when i came home the day you died it was the same day i told mom that i was pregnant with sanjana. i don't know how any of us would have gotten thru losing you, had we not had new life to look forward to. i don't think i could have stood and read a passage at your funeral had i not had that new life growing inside of me.

you would have gotten a kick out of deepak at the mass the night before your funeral. when the priest greeted him, i don't think he expected deepak to go into a full on conversation with him. and when i cried loudly and uncontrollably at the services, it was he who put his hand on mine, who told me that it was ok. it was deepak who said that you were not in pain anymore, that you could walk again. it was deepak who made me smile by saying that you were probably reincarnated into someone who was living in hawaii.

i miss you dad. amit misses you so much too. he has been closer to you than he has to his own dad. he always said that he could tell you anything and he enjoyed the time when he was commuting from la to portland and living with you guys 2 weeks out of the month. i'm so glad he had all that time with you, hanging out in the garage at night, talking, debating.

i don't know what else to say. something just overcame me and instead of crying while i talked it out to myself in my head, i thought i'd cry while i typed it out and it has helped.