My daughter has been gone now for 17 months. Those months have passed much quicker than the time it took my sweet girl to get through her horrible last days. Those seemed to drag by as I watched her cling tenaciously to life, hoping for the miracle we all thought and were sure she deserved.  Since then, I’ve realized that I have a massive regret in dealing with her last year, more particularly her previous six months of life.  I thought at the time that we were doing everything right, so there would be no regrets. But I realize now that I have regrets. Regrets that gnaw away at my conscience. I’m glad I was able to be with her in those months before her death on a full-time basis, no regrets. I’m happy she felt well enough for us to go Christmas shopping and afterward to stop for a sandwich and just talking without mentioning doctor appointments or test results. I’m glad for the afternoons where we enjoyed a television movie or sending a Marco Polo to the family back in Utah. No regrets there either.

I’m glad for the afternoon where she felt like baking her special rolls for the family, no regrets there. I’m pleased for the neighborhood strolls she felt like doing in the weeks before her confinement, almost no regrets there. I put a qualifier there because she fell a couple of times and was very frustrated about her body, failing her in such a simple task. My regret, you wonder, we never talked about death. We both avoided that subject because to do so would have shown lack of faith, and if we did that, we wouldn’t be able to count on the miracle. I wish we could have talked about what it might be like in Paradise and who she might expect to see first. I wish we had talked about what that next step might be like and things she might like to do when she got there. I wish we could have looked at each other in the eye and said, “I’ll miss you very much, and I love you more than words can tell.” As it is, she spent the last minutes of clarity professing her belief in a miracle, and I assured her she had passed the test, and I too still waited for the miracle.

Ideally, I want to die in my sleep. I hope I’ll be found slumbering peacefully with a stilled heart and lungs. If that is not my fate and I know beforehand my passing is imminent, I want to spend those months, weeks, days, hours telling others how much I will miss them and will look forward to hugging them as they follow me to wherever we all go. I want to thank people for making my life one of comfort and joy and assure them they are of value to me during my earthly sojourn. I want to listen to beautiful music and look at favorite pictures where experience is forever captured  through the lens of a camera. I want to enjoy my family and friends as they recount stories about what it was like to be underwater or fall from an airplane down to earth or scale a mountain or hike a canyon or climb a tree or be in a parade or meet someone famous. I want to feel the comforting presence of spirits I hope will be nearby to take me home. I want to know they are there. I want to talk about death and what that experience will entail.

Life is surreal, I can’t help but think that the death experience is also amazing. It’s something we must experience individually. Second-hand experiences won’t do it justice.

I failed my little girl because I did not accept her imminent death. I could have done a much better job in helping her pass through that veil with less fear. Instead, I clung to the hope of a miracle. In analyzing it now, all of us were in a Catch 22 if ever there was one. Our miracle would require faith. The lack thereof would make the miracle null and void. But by never embracing the wonder and reality of death, we did not allow her to experience that part of life or allow ourselves the freeing power of that discussion.  That doesn’t seem to make sense, does it?

There’s nothing I can do about it now. Someday I’ll see my Robbie Dean again and undoubtedly we’ll have a conversation about that part of both our lives. I hope we can take comfort in the fact that we were both doing what we thought we should do. This earth life is but an ink spot in the eternal destiny of our souls.