The last time I spoke with you, two years ago this week, you were tired and sick. I saw you letting go and wanting to hold on. You wanted life and you wanted to keep going, but with a heart that could take you along with it.
I know what it is like to want to be better for others and it is a worthy fight to continue to live with the strength of those you love (who love you) when you feel your own hope is deflated. But in those your last weeks you could no longer even live for others and I knew it was time to let you go.
If I could have gotten you back with your laugh and your smile, without a cough or an exhausted face, I'd have given years of my life. But you gave me courage to take the years I have and do something more with them, because I know that what you believed in was stronger than this world and almost as strong as your love for the things on it. We were very different, but we shared in some things.
You always appreciated the beauty the Earth offered you and I think about the places I get to see with that adoration. (I know this is part of how you and Mom were alike too.) I hear you telling me how much you loved this country as I take in the rivers and the oceans and the mountains and the desert and the forest. I go beyond what is comfortable for me in part because you did not have that luxury. I appreciate my opportunities because of what you sacrificed.
I know you'd do it differently, and I love you even more for supporting me even though I did/do not do it the same way. It is what you lived and died for that instills strength in me when I want to make the world better but feel exhausted. It is your lessons on work that teach me to make an income but realize sometimes that is just what you do on the side so that you can live for real, and in the future, live for more.
I'm going to take you with me everywhere I go, Dad. As time gets bigger, further away from when you were here, I do not lose sight of you. I only see more clearly how I miss you and how I want you to live on.
~atp
