Today is just another Tuesday.  Except it is not just another Tuesday.  Today marks the 20^th time another year has rolled around without my dad.  Another year that I mourn for what might have been.  What should have been.

I don’t grieve in the same way I did 20 years ago.  Time has softened my emotions.  Grief that once was sharp and raw has now become dull and scarred over.  Events, smells and sounds can bring back the memories, but they no longer have the power to cripple me as they once did.

Mostly now, I look at Ava and regret that my dad is not around to see this wonderful human being that has his genes running through her veins.  Sometimes she makes a face, and for a second, I see a flash of my dad.  What I would give to see Ava sitting in his lap, eyes wide with excitement as my father told her one of his famous stories.  I wish I could see her giggling with delight as he tickled her the way he once tickled me, as we curled up on our sofa together.  I will never get to relive my childhood with my father through Ava.  My past and my present can never collide.

My biggest regret, the source of most of my sorrow, is that to Ava, my dad will never be more than a concept, an abstract idea.  A faded image in photographs.  She’ll never hear the sound of his voice or know the warmth of his hug.  No matter how much I talk about him, or show her pictures from the past, he will never be as real to her as he is to me.  He won’t be any more real to her than my own maternal grandfather is to me.

My mother’s father died long before I was born.  Although she spoke of him often, he remained a black and white image in a picture to me my entire life.  In his pictures he looked stern and gruff.  But my mother called him “Daddy” and told tales of him playing with her and her siblings.  She spoke about how much he changed after the war.  The war being WWII, and my grandfather having been drafted into Hitler’s army of old men and children toward the end.  In my head I see flickering black and white images, the grainy film of a news reel.  That is all of my grandfather I have.  I never once met him, or even spoke to him.

It pains me that my dad missed out on being a grandfather.  I hate the fact that Ava’s family history will be told through me, missing a generation of information that my father would have provided.  There is a piece of my family’s fabric that is missing.  Today I remember.  I mourn.  Tomorrow, I begin weaving another portion.

I miss you, Daddy.