For my first kid on her 17th birthday...

I've been doing this for a number of years now, writing a memorial blog entry to my daughter on her birthday and for once I really can't put into words what I feel right now.  A long time has gone by, some 17 years...nearly two full decades have elapsed since Halloween morning in 1996 when our first attempt at being parents ended with the stillborn arrival of Angel Cherub Lohman.

I find myself often imagining what she'd be like right now.  17 means that more than likely she'd be in high school and the big decisions would be on the horizon: where would she go to school after she graduated from high school...if she wanted to do that or go to work, or into the military.  I'm sure I would have had to attend my fair share of events in her life...band contests, dance recitals, sporting events and such, and be the patient dad trying to be invisible when she was giving her boyfriend that last moony goodbye at the end of a date.  That's a little old fashioned of me to say that, given the way things have morphed from an iconic thing on a porch with a white picket fence into a much more 21st Century modern thing, but I have never made any bones about being an old school type of guy.

But I was denied all that, and so was her mother.  So I am left with only what an active imagination will give me when the week of her birthday rolls around.

I see her younger brother and think how she'd be with him.  If everything had turned out like it has with the exception of her passing.  That includes the divorce, Sean's birth, and everything that has happened between 1996 and 2013.  Given Sean's issues I would hope she would have been the good big sister and looked after him as best she could, and have been proud of how far he's come over the years.  

The final thing I wonder about is what she would think of me.  Her mother and I often saw her in our minds as a "daddy's girl" and how she would idolize me as this indestructible Superman who is there to be the rock in her life, and the man by which she measures every man in her life by.  She'd have been 11 years old when my medical problems hit in 2008...I wonder if that would have changed her thinking.  All of those things, taken together, are  the more difficult things I have to imagine because it's dealing with the father-daughter relationship I never will have with her.  I have the benefit of having Sean and I know where I rank in his life, but not knowing how she would have been causes me some of the most heartache above the whole thing.

The one other thing that brings me the most guilt after this much time is the fact that I never got to express fully to her mother how worried I was about her.  Angel was gone...and the possibility of her mother dying in the effort to give birth was very real.  Of all the times of tragedy in my life that was when I felt so very alone in the world, even with friends and family around me giving me support in that awful time.  I was scared to death that I was going to lose her and I couldn't bring myself to tell her or even say it to myself on that night.  If I take any regret to my grave when my time comes is that I never told her, and given the way things ultimately turned out I likely never will be able to tell her that.  

I guess the best thing I have is the memory of the last time I saw her...at the funeral.  My mom told us at the time that we were giving her everything she was going to have in her life in one afternoon...prom...graduation from high school and college...her wedding...all in one day.  She was right of course but I wanted to see her progress up to this day in 2013, where most of that was ahead of her.  Both of us did.  One day I will get to discuss it with her, I know.

Happy Birthday my sweet Angel.  Daddy still loves you.

In Memorium: Angel Cherub Lohman

Born at Rest October 31st, 1996; 1:32am.