It's September 24th today.

My dad would be 51 today. Instead, he's eternally 35.

My father died 16 years ago, when I was three years old. He had cancer.

Everyone experiences loss and grief, and every time it happens, it's hard. The best way I've heard it described is as if you're on a boat. The boat is wonderful and the sea is calm and then one day the seas get rough and one day the boat crashes completely. You're struggling to keep your head above water, you have no idea how you can survive, treading water.

Then, maybe you find something to hold on to. Maybe it's an intact piece of the boat, maybe it's something else entirely. But, it helps you float. No more immediate danger. Then maybe, someday, you get to an island, and it's not perfect, but you're safer now. You get to live there for the rest of your life. Sure, the island gets hit with storms sometimes. Occasionally it's gentle rain, other times it's typhoons dumping buckets of rain on your head and lightning so bright you can't see and thunder that makes you deaf.

The storms pass. But, the island is a reminder that nothing's the same as it was.

On birthdays of the person you love, you have a hard time knowing how to feel. It's their birthday, a celebration. You should be happy they were born, enjoy. But they're gone now. They don't get to enjoy this day with you. It's a heartbreaking combination of intense love and great sadness.

I've been trying to write this all day, but the words are either hard to find or gush out of me. Hemorrhaging emotion, maybe.

My experience isn't special or unique. People die, and the people who love them live on and remember. But, every experience like this is special and unique, because the people were. All our experiences are different. People take longer and shorter times to get to the island. I've had sixteen years to get there, for other people, that's nowhere near enough time.

Loss, death, grief, it's all hard as hell. It makes you stronger, but it's still not worth it, is it?

Happy birthday, Daddy.