There are times when I want to say, No, Father is not dead; he's simply gone on a long journey--but he's coming back. There are times when I cry and think surely Father will hear and come; that he will rise at the sound of his Baby's wailing, hold me to his heart and all would be well again. This thought comforts me for a time; the thought of him holding me high like when I was a baby; his eyes beaming up at me, his precious little daughter. But that is just a dream, like having an imaginary Friend which you know is not real, but you just cannot let it go because the sound of loneliness without it is deadly.

But what about reality? It is hard. I want to tell myself, He's resting. He's resting, now, in peace; finished with the torment in his spirit he had when he was alive. And I hope that he is. There are many who knew my Father, and who despised him, who say he deserved what the world gave him. They've even called him the Devil of Hell. That, however, is not what I knew my Father to be. It is slander. My Father was a good man; there was no more tenderhearted a father than my Father was to me, his little Baby. I wish they had known him the way I knew him. But, alas, they refuse to reason.