Happy Birthday, Papa!

This weekend was my dad's birthday.  He would have turned 65.  So young!  On his actual birthday we went to the cemetery, our first time back to it since his funeral in January.  I was a little bit disappointed that his headstone wasn't done yet; there was just a little temporary plaque marking his grave.  The flowers were from my sister, who had visited his grave earlier in the day.

The day after his birthday my whole family got together to celebrate and eat some of his favorite dessert, spice cake with penuche frosting.  I hope we make it a tradition.


I haven't written much at all about my dad's passing on this blog, I guess because it is so personal to me and this is a public blog.  On one hand, we feel so lucky to have had him for as long as we did with his terminal illness and I'm grateful his death wasn't sudden, but on the other hand I feel like my family and I are getting cheated out of 20+ more years we should have had with him.  Jared will have some permanent memories of him, but I know Maggie's memories of him will fade within a few years.  That is so sad to me.  Although the last few weeks of his life were especially awful for him, my siblings and I had the chance to help give round-the-clock care for him, something that hospice couldn't do, especially over the Christmas break.  It wasn't the kind of Christmas break I had anticipated having, but I was able to have some good one-on-one conversations with him.  That time with him was a gift.

Here are a couple videos of my dad.  The first was with Jared almost 3 years ago.  My dad is telling him one of his famous "mousie stories."  The second video is my dad getting Maggie to giggle when she was still a baby.