You will be gone for 2 years, in just a few short days. It's times like these I really wish you were still here. I miss you so much. Even though it took us a long time to get our relationship in a good place, we finally did; and I'm glad that the last time I saw you, we made things even better for our father daughter bond. 

I've got to tell you that when I heard that you went missing, at the end of 2016, I lost my marbles. I was on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media outlets getting the word out for 3 days in a row. When Momma Beth emailed me to let me know you had been found, I was only partially relieved. There was something that didn't sit right with me. You living with that sister of mine, somehow I knew things weren't going to go well very long, and I was right. 

You had fallen asleep in the pew one Sunday morning as the pastor gave his sermon. My sister was sitting in a different pew, and she was incapable of seeing you (which prolonged your hell for the time being), but when she got up to leave, she saw you sleeping, and lost her mind. From what I was told, she cussed you from the time she woke you up until you packed your things and left that day. 

You were 65 years old, it was January 2017, it was colder than Hades, and you went to sleep under a bridge. According to mom, you had said you'd rather freeze to death than have your own child talk to you like that ever again.

If I had known exactly where you were in Livingston, Jeremy and I would have come and got you. We were doing good at that point, and we both wanted to find you. But how? You had no number for me, I had no number for you. There was no way on Earth I was asking that woman I'm forced to call my sister for your number because of the mad hate we'd had between us since we were kids. No, dad, I don't think she would have told me. 

On February 7, 2019, Momma Beth hit me up on Messenger. She was acting extremely strange, and wanted me to wake Jeremy up so that she could tell him what was going on and he could tell me. Being 40 years old, and none too stupid, I was reading into every word across the screen of my phone, and my gut was in knots. I tried to wake Jeremy, but he wasn't budging.

Finally, after the fourth or fifth time I tried to wake up the sleeping grizzly bear, and he would not get up, I broke down. I told your sister, my Momma Beth, that she was scaring me, that I could tell by the way she was talking about you there was something wrong. She still would not tell me. So, I asked her, "Are you telling me that my dad is dead?" When she answered yes, I could barely read a word of her apology. 

I told Jeremy, and our roommates Billie and David. They came and sat in the front of the trailer with me, I played Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I cried so hard I thought i would die of a broken heart. Even though I didn't die, a great big huge crevasse the size of the Grand Canyon was ripped from my being. 

When I lost Jeremy 2 months and 2 days later....

To Be Continued...