On May 15th, 2025, my world tilted.

My Dad passed away from an aggressive cancer after only around 6 weeks of being sick. His last three weeks were in the hospital & rehab when we were holding out hope that he might be able to fight it, if they could just get him strong enough to endure the treatment. His only grandson was 18 and had an unexpected chance to visit from Utah, and this encouraged Dad to fight, too.

To this day I thank God that I could be there and hold his hand as he claimed his reward in Heaven. I got home the day before from a work trip and met him in the emergency room. I stayed with him until he was admitted for the night. Our last meal together was the hospital’s grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup (maybe not as good as mine, but it was his favorite meal).

No matter how these things go, whether it’s a sudden death or a long illness, we do the best we can for everyone’s circumstances. Still, the concept of spending a year in grief is a fallacy. The grief really never ends. What happens, though, is you learn to get through each of the annual milestones, which are so different because your loved one is not in them anymore.

His funeral service was lovely and well attended. After just two years in Texas, so many people loved him. He was just that kind of person. One of my favorite memories is of him bouncing around the church before service started, greeting all his friends.

I’m writing an autobiographical leadership book about my father which will be released around Veteran’s Day 2026 (roughly 18 months after he passed). It will be called Leadership, Love & Legacy: Lessons from Dad. Meanwhile, I thought it would be interesting to look back over the 12 months without him on a more personal level. For example, going back into his apartment the day after he died to get a suit for him to wear in the casket, I realized his laptop computer was still on and open on his desk. He still had laundry in the dryer. It was, as my husband said, truly a life interrupted. So, here’s the story, month by month.

June: We’re still clearing out the apartment, deciding which things to keep and which to sell. Looking back later, I realized there are quite a few things I wish I had kept, but in the end it’s all just stuff. My brain was definitely not working well that first month. There was also a sense that “now that Dad’s gone, none of this stuff matters, so who cares?” It was definitely a defeatist attitude, albeit temporary. The month of June always includes a day of pondering mom’s death back in 2016, anyway, so saying the month was dark for me is pretty accurate. But, you keep busy. There’s so much to do! There were so many things to think about regarding his tiny estate: credit cards to close and bank accounts to close and money to move around and last bills to pay and Social Security to notify and the Army to notify – you get the idea. I was working a little bit on autopilot and I think to some extent it was a good distraction. The deep rending & ripping of your heart is whitewashed by the simple administrative tasks. I also realized at this point that my brain cannot hold all the grief in addition to running my own home, and small business, and church obligations, and continuing on two local boards and all the other things life requires. People were so gracious when I said I had to step away from the board seats, and I am grateful to them.

July: I’m still in a fog about Dad. Plus, this is the month that my brothers passed: Albert on July 1st, 2006, and his twin brother, John, on July 1, 2022. (Yes, they were born on and died on the same date.) Independence Day weekend is always bittersweet (especially since Albert was in the Navy and aggressively patriotic, like me). Of course, we’re still closing up the apartment. Thank goodness we had some breathing room; the lease didn’t expire until August 1^st. The kindness of strangers and friends has been incredible. Apartment staff that I didn’t even know were helping with forwarding mail. Friends who I’ve known for years, and friends that I just met, were literally sitting on the floor of his apartment with me physically sorting books (he had thousands) and papers and albums and clothing. They helped me decide what to keep and what not to keep, when my heart was anxious to hang on to every little remnant of what I had left of him. Even on days when I couldn’t even be there, these amazing women kept sorting and boxing and cleaning. You were a godsend (& you know who you are) and I love you.

August: My amazing husband and I feel the small relief of having the apartment emptied and Dad’s “things” put away. We’re down to just 11 boxes stuffed in a closet, in what we used to call Dad’s Room, in our home. When we bought the house in 2022, we remodeled & intentionally created this sanctuary for Dad. We knew that someday he might need to be with us full time. He called it his room even though he had a great apartment a mile away. He’d visit or dog sit and we all treated it like it was “his” from the beginning. It’s now Paul’s office. We see the little silver lining of creating something useful to help blunt the sense of loss. It was months before I started calling it Paul’s Office vs. Dad’s Room. I also started thinking about writing the book around this time.

September: It’s my birthday month and we have a big trip planned; a Celebrity cruise to Greece that’s been on our calendar for two years. Looking back, I don’t know how I mustered the energy to go. But it was wonderful, & a cathartic break to see that the world goes on, as Dad always said it did. I asked Dad when Albert died how he was still standing after losing his son so suddenly. He told a story about his grandfather, Pop Smith, who taught him that “life is for the living.” He said if we are faithful and know that our loved ones are now out of pain and happy and joyful in Heaven, we can grieve but we can move on. Dad would have wanted me to take the cruise; he told me specifically in the hospital “Don’t cry honey; I’m believer and I’m ready if God wants me.” I usually take my birthday off anyway, so on the actual day (which was after the cruise) we had dinner with my pastor and his family which is always a relaxing and welcome event. I still haven’t eaten a grilled cheese sandwich. We adopted a new dog in September too, and I’m a little sad that Dad will never meet him. I start talking to people about writing the book, and reserve the website LeadershipLove.com.

October: This is a big nothing burger of a month when it comes to Dad. We’re backing up photos from his iPhone (which he got at 80!) and cancelling credit cards and sending death certificates and paperwork. I’m making lists of things that are administrative needs. I’m looking up passwords. For years Dad would say: if anything happens, get the green book! If my Dad hadn’t had the little green book, containing information about all his accounts and passwords, I could not have accessed anything.

Also, my name was added to his bank accounts as soon as he moved here. He had given me all his paperwork such as funeral arrangements which were prepaid and the information to go to the VA and get his headstone. For any of you out there reading this: please do this for your family very well in advance because the ease of the transition is noteworthy. It’s enough of a nightmare to lose a loved one. I’m so grateful for my Dad for being so prepared. I’m both mad that I only got two years with him here, and incredibly grateful that I got those two years with him. At this point, I’m trying to ease into the usual rhythm of running my small business. I’m making some big changes to the structure of my work so that takes the whole month of October. It did help to have a great focus and something new and better to think about for a little.

So, I’m digging back into work, showing up again for events in town now and again, figuring out my new normal.

November: This month was much more difficult because Thanksgiving was always our celebration. Because Dad, Mom, Paul & I are always so active in our churches, Christmas was too busy for us to do the flying across the country from Florida to Indianapolis or Indianapolis to Texas or wherever we were living. So, sometime in the late 1980s we started going to Grandma Lee’s in Florida. At our peak we would have 30 or 40 people crammed into her little house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was wonderful and fun and really a whole other story. It’ll never not be my favorite family holiday because of those experiences with Dad and his side of the family. The players changed, the kids grew up, and the group shrunk significantly over the years. I want to honor his life, and he would never want me to wallow in grief, but this first one without him was tough. Due to some illnesses and travel issues, our group was small this first time without Dad. There were 6 of us: myself and my husband Paul, my cousin Brett and his wife Tara, my Uncle Glenn and Aunt Roddy. I’m grateful that we could connect and hope to continue the tradition. We also decide to donate some of his legacy to our church, to build a little pavilion over the meat smokers for our men’s group. Dad had started a men’s breakfast group while he was here, so it seemed fitting.

December: As I mentioned, it’s a busy month for all of us. I had missed Christmas with Dad for so many years, and when he moved to TX and joined

my church, I had such hope that we’d have many Christmas choirs together. I got mad a God about this, just for a minute. One poignant point this time is that Dad had been the narrator a few times for our Christmas and Easter cantatas and his resonate bass voice was incredible. So, we all missed that, but in our faith we know that we will see him again someday, and I will sing in Heavenly choirs with him then. And we were blessed to have Paul’s Mom with us for the holidays and we loved every minute of that.

January: It’s just the usual for this month. January is such a re-set time for everyone, isn’t it? Now that I’ve made the big changes to my business, I have to create all the documentation and such, so I’m busy, and my grief is slowly becoming a low hum in the background. It’s always there, though, right at the surface. Finally, when I think of Dad, I can smile again. I can, finally, appreciate that he’s buried right across the street from my house. He could have been in a military cemetery, even near DC because of his medals. But it’s fitting that he’s buried in the Medlin Historical Cemetery; he chose it because of his love of American History (that was his college major, too).

This means I can walk the dogs and pray a little and just be.

February: We have our annual church retreat the weekend before Lent, and it was nice to take the time away. Speaking events are starting to come in again, and I’m back in full swing around town for business. The little flutter when I’d go into “Dad’s room/Paul’s office” has stopped, although there are still 10 boxes. I don’t know when I’ll get to those. When I did clear out the first box, which had so many files from military experience, I took pictures, read a few items, and was finally able to discard the rest. But the energy it took was significant. So, we’ll see when I get to the rest. The high school baseball team is playing again, and I attend a couple games. Even though we only got to a few games the year before, I’m trying to be grateful for those memories.

March: He would have been 87 on March 10. I get a little mad again, and try to break the habit of cataloging all the things we didn’t get to do. I’d spent twenty years trying to get him to move nearer to me after he retired. But

life kept getting in the way. He had to take care of Mom when she got sick, then Al died suddenly, then Mom lost the fight, then John got cancer and passed. He was so selfless. So, March is a month of pushing away my frustration that I “only” got two years with him. But, I’m busy, and preaching some at church, and in the end it always comes down to how grateful I am that he was here at all. At this point, I decide to release the new book around Veterans Day if possible.

April: The low hum is softer, but always there. I still cry, and amazingly still pick up the phone to “tell Dad” once in a while. I think this will always be the way. I can’t explain why my grief is so different, so much more difficult, than with the rest of my family. One friend thinks it’s because I’m the last one standing of the five of us. Some say Dads and Daughters have a different bond. I don’t care why, really, but I know it changed me. A friend comes to visit from PA, and we explore my little town, and I get to tell her stories about him. Paul and I are taking the golf cart (that Dad bought us) around on little tours of our town, or to dinner, and we drive by his apartment sometimes. I don’t feel sick anymore when I look over at the parking lot there and see someone else’s car.

May: I decide to take May 15 off every year. I’m self-employed, so who’s going to argue with me on that? I spend the day looking at old pictures and soaking in gratitude for all that he was to me (and still is). It’s a restful day, and I enjoy the memories, and I make myself a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.