**Originally posted on October 23, 2014**
Something is missing in my life. There has been a void, an empty place, for ten years.
Today is October 23. It would have been my daddy's 70th birthday.
He lost his battle with lung canger in May 2004. It is a horrible disease, and it wasn't caught until he was too far gone to save.
I was a daddy's girl; full-out tom boy and ready to go where he went. He wasn't perfect--far from it--but I knew he loved me. We shared a love of dogs, classic country music, The 3 Stooges, and John Wayne westerns.
The day he was diagnosed, I went home and cried. Every time I saw him, hurting and wasting away, my heart cracked a little bit more. That last day, when I was holding him, he looked at me and I could see the silent plea in his eyes. It hurt; God, it hurt to tell him it was okay to let go, that we would be fine. But it hurt more knowing that he felt nothing but pain and weariness. When he closed his eyes and sighed his last breath, my twenty-two year-old heart shattered.
It has been ten years and, while the pain never completely goes away, it does get easier. I miss him and think about him everyday. There are those days I know I am going to be sad: his birthday and the anniversary of his death. Then there are those days when the grief sneaks up and snaps around my heart, and the tears come again.
He never got to meet my husband; never got to see how happy he makes me. He wasn't there when my daughter was born, or to celebrate my first book being published. Those were some of the brightest days of my life, and I was truly happy. But a little part of my heart yearned for him to be there too.
My daughter will never know him. She will never know the fun, playful side of him or the comfort of crawling into his lap, of smelling Old Spice and tobacco and feeling safe.
I will never smell that combination and not think of him.
I am an adult, capable of making it on my own and finding happiness. I am happy with my life. But there are some days when I wish I could go back and be his little girl again.
Something is missing in my life and always will be.
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