RMBRNDAD

RMBRNDAD - this is my license plate, remembering dad is what it means.............

A bit of a crappy day. It was 14 years ago today that my dear dear Dad died. He was only 54. I was so young (by young I mean, not actually in age, but really in my life). How to start this? Well, I remember my parents going on a biking vacation to Ireland with friends. They didn't take luggage, just what they could carry on bikes and they biked from town to town, pub to pub. They were gone 2 weeks. They had a wonderful time. That was the last vacation my dad really took, which is an odd thing to think about. He was diagnosed with leukemia in September of 1993. It took us all by surprise. I remember my Mom calling me (I worked at a residential high school in durham, nc - the School of Science and Math) and I answered the phone, and screamed. Students came running, I barely listened to my Mom telling me, through tears, that I had to go to UNC hospitals. So a dear student (who is now a doctor herself, who grew up with parents who are doctors) ran into my bathroom, shoved a toothbrush in my back pocket, grabbed a pillow and sent me off. It was a Thursday night, we all snuggled in Dad's bed and watched Seinfeld together. We laughed, we cried, and we laughed. We found out he had the "good leukemia", called Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. It was "treatable" he would need a bone marrow transplant, but he would be okay. I was 25 when this happened, I didn't have a lot of direction in my life, I had a job, but not a career.

I realize now, in looking back, my Dad was a very private person about his feelings, fears, his illness. He was the life of the party, had amazing friends, made everyone laugh, loved to be with people (well, most people), told great stories, and was happy. But, he didn't want any of us inside his illness. We didn't really talk about it much. We ignored it because he wanted us to. I wouldn't do that now, but then, I was young, I just did it. I did chemo to keep it at bay, he has his blood checked, he was doing fine. Through some unfortunate circumstances that are just too much to blog about, he ended up very sick in a hospital in Columbia, SC getting a bone marrow transplant.

We went into the hospital July 5th, 1994. He stayed there until he died, November 8th, 1994. We were with him 24 hours a day for his entire stay. Someone had to be with him, and generally it was one of us Millar's. We survived, he did not.

So, for his memorial service, we had a Quaker (which I must point out is NOT amish, much to the confusion of quite a large number of people I encounter) service for him at Carolina Friends School (where we all went to school, where he worked for many years). We had a yellow balloon that we released at the service, given to us by our dear friends who own Balloons and Tunes in Chapel Hill. This balloon is huge, 2 feet in diameter. We let it go and watched it for what seemed like an hour in the sky. So, now we have a tradition. Every year we release the big yellow balloon on this day. We watch it go, see who can see it the longest, we have our children talk to Grampa Jim, and we watch. The only other times we have released the balloon is when each of us girls got married. Marianne and I were married locally, so it was easy! Lynn got married in Key West, so we took the deflated balloon with us down there, and gave Erin the responsibility of getting it to the wedding on the beach. We smile through out tears with the balloon.

There are days that I do not think about my Dad. I know that is okay. He missed so many milestones in my life, that if I thought of it too much I would not be able to get out of bed. He never met Tony, my husband, who really picked me up from a pile of apathy less than a year after my Dad died. He did not see any of us girls get married, he would have been the BEST grandfather, and he never met his grandchildren. For him and for them I am truly sad. All of the things he would have LOVED he missed. He would have loved his daughters as adults. He just would have. He would have loved holidays with us, our spouses, he would have loved Tony. They would have had great times drinking beer, and getting away from all of the women in the house. He would have found such joy in Tyler, Maggie, James, Emma and Cooper (the grandchildren). So, today, I am sad and angry. Sad for my loss, angry for my loss and just missing him quite a bit.