A Letter to the Divine Miss M

Jami and Maddie, I hope you're reading this. I don't mean to be sad or downtrodden, but some things need to be addressed and I hope I can be of some help to a young girl in mourning. This is sparked by Jami's blog entry on Mother's Day.
Those of you who want to access it can link to Jami's blog to the right and read her May entry called "Mother's Day."
Maddie, this is for you. We knew your father, Kevin Pfirrman, when he and your mother were young(er) :-) and very much in love and we were all idealistic college students who had nothing better to do than run a daily newspaper at Kent State University.
Those were the simple days.
You, Maddie, were a twinkle in your father's eye and a far-off dream for your parents at the time. I know you miss him terribly, and for that, I am so sorry. Nothing quite shocked us more than your father's death. He was one of us. He accepted anyone, was so kind to everyone and was so easy to get along with.
I lost my dad when I was young, too.
Now that I am 32, I can tell you, even though my father was only in my life for seven years, his was the most significant influence in my life. In those short years, he taught me to get up early, to go to work every day, and to listen to one another. He taught me how to scratch lottery tickets and swore me to secrecy that if he got to get a beer at the bar, he would buy a rootbeer for me and that I wasn't to tell Mama that he had a beer.
We had an agreement. :-)
We lived in Florida when I was younger and those were my most special years with him in the time before he died. We fished, we swam, we ate boiled peanuts.
To this day, I cherish boiled peanuts, fishing, and swimming. They're all soothing to my soul because they're connections to his soul, the times we shared and the moments that made up our life together.
I always remember him saying, "Share and share alike," and the fact that he picked my name. And I'm glad he picked my name, trust me, because otherwise I'd be called Jeannette, and I don't like the name Jeannette. :-)
You are half your father; you have the sparkle that he had and your mother has; you are a product of him and them and their love. You are a child of the Earth and as you live out the days before you, you can cherish your father's memory in so many ways.
If I have a son some day, for example, he will be named Nicholas, after my father; as much as I thought I looked like my mother, I found photos of my father recently. He is who I resemble most; I have his nose and his mouth and some of his loud ways.
He was, afterall, a boisterous Italian with a larger-than-life personality.
For you, you can talk to people who knew your father; there are so many of us out here who will help you. I can't tell you how to grieve, for it is its own process. But I can tell you that in life, there is a ying and yang, a give and take, and for every loss, there is a gain; for every step backward, there is a step forward.
I promise you, life is beautiful. And in order to cherish and enjoy the rainbows, we must, unfortunately, witness the rain, too.
Take care, and please, contact me whenever you need to.