our Pops.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to wake up in a world without Troy. It feels unsteady. It feels crushing and devastating. It feels wrong and unfair.

It feels gray.

I was fourteen years old when I met him for the first time. I really (really) liked his son, and I really (really) feared his parents. I’m not sure why I was intimidated, other than the obvious (I wanted them to like me), but it probably had something to do with how close his family seemed. There was something different about TJ (in a good way), and I suspected that his mom and dad and sisters were the reason.

I was right.

And since then, they have been my family. Gradually, a little more so with the passing of time, but mine all the same. Angie has loved me as a daughter since that first year…

And Troy did, too.

How do you reconcile your past memories with your current heartache?

How do you move forward when your mind is playing reruns of days gone by on a loop?

How do you make peace with never hearing the voice or feeling the presence of someone who commanded every room ever again?

How do you grieve well for yourself when you feel the searing pain radiate off of your husband and kids even from the other side of the house?

Those are only a sample of the questions I’m wrestling with in the early days, early hours of this loss.

The answers will reveal themselves in time, I know. And I don’t need to be told all the things that people compulsively tell you when you’re sad. But the weight of life starting over without someone you’ve loved for so long is heavy.

And I am not afraid to give myself over to it.

Troy wasn’t my dad.

He was a dad to me, though.

He made space for me, sacrificed for me, trusted me in a unique way, laughed with me, moved through hard seasons with me, argued with me, loved me.

If you have known this kind of love, I don’t have to tell you that a memory could never be enough. There is no replacement for a life you treasured, and there is no bandaid big enough for a blow like this. My heart already aches for every birthday, every baseball and football game, every dance recital, every milestone, everything that we won’t look up to see him at.

He was just always there. He was always showing up even when he ran on fumes and had a million other things that he could’ve been doing. And it feels impossible to accept that he won’t be anymore.

But I feel bone-deep grateful for every moment I lingered in,

every laugh line I memorized,

every opportunity I took to hug him and feel his warmth,

every trip I was invited along for,

every silent conversation we shared,

every day I got to be under his wide, strong covering.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to wake up in a world without Troy. It feels unsteady. It feels crushing and devastating. It feels wrong and unfair.

It feels gray.

Even the sky agreed on that first day without him.

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,

spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts

for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck

of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,

hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"

there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices

ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying..."

Gone From My Sight

by Henry Van Dyke