my dad

as the 6 month mark of my dad being gone & father's day approaching i think about my dad quite a lot these days.  well, pretty much every day. 
i've lost friends before.  i've lost grandparents.  but no one who i looked up to as much as my dad.  no one who was such a constant in my life. 
my mom always tells my sister & me that we'll probably be fine on father's day, but it's the other days when we need to know what to tell the air conditioning guy, or the insurance guy or when i get a whiff of that BBQ smell when it is the hardest. 

james arness from gunsmoke passed away today.  my dad loved gunsmoke.  i'm sure my dad was in his welcoming party up in heaven.  it's things like that that make me smile when i think about my dad. 

there is one thing i have realized from all of this.  when bad things happen to others....when friends of mine lose someone they love....i am going to try my hardest never to say "let me know if i can do anything."  it will be hard, b/c it's just ingrained in us down here.  my friends taught me a lot about how to love your friends when you see them struggling.  like the one who didn't give me an option but came & stocked my fridge with breakfast food the day after my dad died.  we hadn't been to the grocery store...we had a month old....and we had people staying with us for the funeral...she even carried up a huge thing of water to put in our fridge.  i didn't tell her we needed that.  she knew.  she also helped me type up all the handouts for the funeral...and caught my typos because i couldn't think straight.  the food helped feed my  numerous friends who drove 4-7 hours to be there for me & love on me.  then there was the friend who drove from nashville and back in the same day to be there.  or the one who had a c-section on wednesday & came to the visitation on friday night...ridiculous. 
and then there are the ones who couldn't be there who loved me from afar with calls, flowers, cards...
even flowers & cards from people i've only known for a couple of months or haven't heard from in years. 

i didn't use names because so many people did so many things, but i wanted to be specific because when i think back on that time i think about how well they loved me.  i want to always remember that and give examples of things that meant the world to my family & me.  i had a month old.  had just lost my dad.  i had absolutely no clue "what i needed" in order to ask someone to help. 

love is an action verb.  i understand that so much more now. 

love y'all.  thank y'all for loving me. 
xoxo
em