Standard Delivery.

Me: “Sweetheart, what’s this?”

Her: “It’s a letter for Grandpa.”

Me: “Why is it attached to this?”

Her: “So Daddy can give it to Grandpa.”

Awkward.

Since the moment her father died, my daughter has voiced her anger and her sadness that there was no warning and that she was robbed of virtually every father-daughter memory. Her memories are fleeting and those that she does have are magnified and made real because I have fought to keep the memories alive.

I am, admittedly, somewhat concerned that her favorite stories are, in no particular order, that she a) pooped inside me just prior to her debut, b) pooped on the wall during a Daddy diaper change, and c) walked down the hallway naked with a pool noodle declaring she wanted a “tail just like Daddy.”

What happened to whisker kisses?

But I digress.

There is something about daddies and daughters and the memories they share and my daughter is understandably outraged that death has interfered with her lot in life. There is also something very raw and candid and occasionally uncomfortable about the very open way that we discuss life and death, and while we have plenty of experience with the “post” we have very little experience with the “pre.”

I have the memories and the stories that my daughter does not and where she had no warning, I’ve had years. My father has faced an irreversible prognosis with grace and dignity and humility and humor and practicality for more years than she has lived. He has proven all of the doctors’ well-educated prognoses wrong, stretching what was supposed to be four months to nearly a decade. Faced with death, he chose to live.

But all that she knows is that he is among the very few consistent, loving male presences in her childhood, and where she had no warning before I’ve promised that this time she’ll have the chance to say goodbye on her terms, in her time. And with perspective that only a child who’s been there before can bring, she reminds me that it isn’t how we die. It’s how we choose to embrace life.

Me (whispering): “But Grampa is here.”

Her: "I know. Daddy can save it and give it to him when he gets there."