8 years Today

8 years today.
Dad, I miss you. Everyday. I know you weren't perfect. I know you did the best you knew how. I appreciate all of the ways you helped me to be who I am, even though it hurt sometimes and left me feeling frustrated and unsure.
You gave me a love of music ( a love for the classics as well as the new and the obscure: the Stones, The Beatles, Barry White, Madonna, Chaka Khan...Hit after hit after hit!) and Sunday morning breakfasts with the Three Stooges, an appreciation of family, an introduction to Mae West and "Are you Being Served? ", an appreciation for how precious and short life is. How it can change in an instant- with a phone call from your sister at 3am, letting me know you were gone...
And I can still feel you...everyday. Maybe its the parts of me that come from you, that are alive in me that I feel. I have your eyes and your smile. When I am laying in bed at night, and I hear the train blow it's whistle somewhere in the distance, I think of you. Whenever I hear the Spinners song, " Ill Be Around" play at work, I stop and think of you and how Aaron played that vinyl in the early hours of the morning, as we, your whole family, gathered n the living room where you had left us, just hours before. How fitting the message of that song was for that time and place...
And I think about you when I hear this song too- though I have never heard it played on the radio. I know you loved this song, and you were so excited to share it with me. I will forever think of a summer evening you were driving Derrick and I back, over Germantown, windows rolled down, singing along with Johnny Nash. So happy in that moment- so alive.
You had so much soul Dad. Thanks for giving me some of that. I love you always,
your little Pampoo, Paula Lu ♥