Now that school is done...it seems that I am suddenly very emotional and feeling more grief over the loss of my father. Of course I have been missing him all along...but it is hitting me harder. For two days now I have been crying...sometimes very hard. And last night, I found this blog by a girl named Traci who is grieving the loss of her mother, who was also diagnosed with cancer in August and passed away in September. I read most of the posts about her mother...who was a fabulous woman of God, and found myself sobbing and sobbing over her loss...as well as my own. I can truly feel her loss and pain.I have come to the conclusion that I filled my mind with graduate work...thus delaying my grief a bit. I have been noticing that there were certain connections that I had with my dad that I don't think my sisters shared. They had different connections I think. Mine were art and literature. He was very encouraging to me about my artwork and creativity. It was something we shared. He was very artistic and creative. Like me, he was often dreaming up the next project. It was a passion that he understood. I don't always get the same encouragement from those around me that I need in this area. The other thing we shared was literature. We would often talk about what books we had read. About two weeks before his diagnosis, he gave me a collection of works by Jane Austin. He had picked it up somewhere and was passing it along to me, knowing that I would enjoy it. Sometimes, he would show me a book that he had purchased at a flea market. Last summer, he also gave me Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, which he had picked up for about $1 at some flea market. I still have the book on my night stand. I can't say that I enjoyed it, but I appreciate the oldness of it...and that it was given to me by Dad. He was the one that always read us poetry when we were little kids. Thanks to him, I am pretty seasoned in classic children's poetry. When I am a librarian some day, and hopefully I will work with children in some capacity...I will make sure to read Winkin Blinkin and Nod and The Owl and the Pussy Cat. I may even throw in Little Orphan Annie or The Raggedy Man. Hopefully I'll be able to read it as well as he did to us and not cry in the middle of it.
