He's still with me

My dad is still with me. He sent me a sign today.

He chose to be cremated. I have had a very hard time with this issue. I didn't want to allow it, even knowing it was what he wanted. Its just so final. He is completely and utterly gone. I know it would have been no different otherwise, he would have been buried, but this is so much harder to think about.

Each of his children are getting a small measure of his ashes. 

I went today to pick them up, to give to my siblings.

I was standing outside the funeral home, looking up at the sky, trying to find the courage to go in. My heart was so very heavy. As I climbed the stairs, I asked my dad to send me a sign that he was with me at that very hard moment.

Out of nowhere, a very small white feather fluttered down around my shoulders and landed on the ground in front of me. 

I know that was him. 

I know it was him, and I am so very thankful to know that he can hear me. 

He's still with me. 

~sugar

Processing....

Its been an overwhelming couple of weeks.

I hardly know what to write. I know there are things I want to say....

I'm feeling really alone.

I miss my dad. 

I've had no one to share this with. My family is so caught up in petty bickering and in fighting, they cant see how much this hurts, how much they are hurting me. 

I had to make the hard decisions, the ones no daughter ever wants to make for her father. There was no will, only verbal wishes remembered from long ago. I did what I thought he wanted. My family hates me for this. I didn't wait for them to stop fighting. I honored my father by respecting his last wishes. I won't be petty and childish, and play their games, and they hate me for it. 

This is one of those hinging moments--those ones where you know nothing is ever going to be the same. My whole world changed, and I didn't want it to. I wasn't ready. 

Ace is doing what He thinks is best, giving me space to grieve and process. I understand what He is doing, but I need someone to hold me, to make me feel safe right now.....the one person I always knew would put his arms around me and shelter me, no matter what, is gone. 

I don't have anyone to protect me now, to buffer the hard parts of growing up, to even shield me from the viciousness of my own family. 

I am his fifth child. I was "the little one", the one born far too soon, tiny and weak and he was so very protective of me. 

I miss him.

I feel so very very alone. 

~sugar