Argh

I went to an outdoor wedding last night.  The bride was a young girl that used to be a part of my life, and I loved her!  She worked in my classroom as a teenager, and I even spent a weekend with her and her siblings while her parents were out of town.

The wedding was lovely, but it was hot.  All was going along smoothly.  The bridesmaids came down the aisle, and then here came the bride, escorted by her father.

BAM.

I started blubbering like an idiot.  I'd like to blame it on the heat, or that this girl is special to me, or that I'm upset because yet another young person from my life is getting married and I am still not.  But it was about my dad.  All I could think about was getting married without my dad, and how hard that will be.  I kept thinking about the fact that some day I will get married to someone who will never even have known my father, and that kills me.  It will be the longest, loneliest walk down that aisle for me, but I wouldn't want any other person to take me down the aisle.  There's only one person that belongs in that spot.

It's been a year and four months.  So much has changed since then.  In pretty much every aspect of my life, I am happier than I was a year and four months ago, which sounds very odd to say because my dad was my world.  But I know that he's happy that I am happy.  It's still very odd to think that I will never see him again.

I dream about him almost every single night.  When I used to dream about him, the dreams would be me looking for him, or talking on the phone to him and not being able to see him, or I'd be sobbing in my dreams and wake up sobbing.  Now, though, I dream about him every night and they are just normal dreams.  I treasure them because I hear his voice and see him again.  I hope they never, ever stop.

Grief is very weird.

And, I miss him.