Another year has come and gone, yet the loss is still as fresh as if it happened yesterday.  4 May of this year will mark the second year since Daddy died, and not a day goes by that I don't miss him. 

It's strange, because I've lost other family members  - great grand and grand parents, great uncles and aunts, family friends, even pets - none of those losses have stayed with me the way the loss of Daddy has.

Easter wasn't easy, as it was a very important day in our household as the celebration of the Resurrection of the Christ.  We'd get up early Easter Sunday, all dolled up in brand new clothes (back in the day, little girls wore hats, patent leather black shoes and gloves to Church!) with a corsage Daddy would get for my birth mother and I on our dresses.  Hers was usually an orchid and mine was a carnation.   Daddy would preach about the significance of the day, we would have an Easter breakfast at the church, then another service and Easter Egg Hunt at home.   Daddy would be worn out by the time dinner was over and would fall asleep in his chair watching or listening to the Cubbies (if baseball season had started) or with the television on to a movie.

Because of the let - downs that the United Methodist Conference threw at me following Daddy's death, I've lost my affinity for organized religion.  This was the first Easter Sunday that I didn't make the effort to go to church.  Instead, I got on my motorcycle and took a long ride through the countryside, following the back roads in Marion County, thinking of Daddy and of the significance of the day.  I imagine he was spinning in his grave, but going to church with all the anger I feel for what 'Church' really is right now just didn't seem worth the effort.

The United Methodist Conference has a slogan right now called 'Rethink Church'.  The thing is, 'Church', at least where the UMC is concerned, has become more about kow towing to the special needs than it is about feeding the spiritual needs.  The churches these days look more like auditoriums for shows than worship centers, with projection screens and individual chairs instead of the familiar pews. 

Maybe if I could find a small, country church that acts like the churches I grew up in, my faith in organized religion might return.  But for now, I believe in God, and that Daddy is indeed in Heaven with the other saints.  I just don't see a lot of spirituality on Earth these days. 

So this Sunday, I'm makin' a road trip to Daddy's gravesite, likely with the car because of rain probabilities.  But I'm goin' to talk to him, and to remember him, and will definitely mourn him. 

And then I'll go visit the triplets and their brother and my neice and her fiance, and enjoy them for a little bit, and then come home. 

And continue to miss him.