Stories From The Heart

 “Love, Dad.”

          Picture a summer day full of sunshine and flowers. A young  dad and his two-year-old daughter play. She hops. They hug. He holds her up. She smiles down. They hold hands and hold one another in each other’s eyes. He shows her the perfect beauty of a tiny flower. She herself is a perfect, tiny flower; smiling, laughing and looking up to her father with love.

              She has lush strawberry blond hair. He has no hair. The chemo robbed him of his hair and lymphoma is inexorably robbing him of his life.

          “This dad, a young adult himself, was determined to leave a legacy of love for his daughter,” says non-profit Hospice of the North Coast Chaplain Carolyn Richardson. “He wanted her to know how her existence filled his life, to the very end.” 

          Through its Life Story program, Hospice of the North Coast created a DVD celebrating father-daughter moments of togetherness, with the song “You Are So Beautiful” serving as the lyrical backdrop to this poignant pictorial. The DVD  ends with the words the father wrote on a sequence of cards for his daughter to open on special occasions long after he was gone: her birthdays; her high school graduation; her wedding day.

          Two simple words will guide her through the best of times and the toughest of times; giving her the certain knowledge that bonds can endure beyond life itself.  “Love, Dad.”