Forward...First Complete Draft

"I'm going to tell you something. But before I do I want you to know that I know how selfish this is going to sound, I know how messed up this is, I know you had no way of knowing we were going to be faced with this. But it is the way I feel and I'm so sorry for it.......If I lose the experience of having my Dad walk me down the aisle because you took your precious time proposing to me...I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you."

I still can't believe I had the courage to utter those words. I still can't believe how much raw, emotional honesty they hold. Because I meant it. Every. Word. And no, I wouldn't have been able to forgive him. I still would have married him, loved him and I would have eventually healed. I would NOT have, under any circumstances, thrown it in his face or used those special wifey powers a woman earns with her wedding vows to torture him. But I wouldn't have been able to completely forgive him.

Let me introduce you to my Daddy. He came into my life when I was about 8...and he stayed. He married my mom when I was 10. He is a kind, loving, understanding, funny, never-meets-a-stranger, type of man that I truly believe was hand-delivered into my life by God Himself. Please understand, in my mind, this man isn't just any Daddy, this man is the Daddy that steps in and loves a 10-year-old child as his own flesh and blood. This man is the Daddy that reaches out, claims as his own, and holds in his lap the biological, emotional, financial, personal, life-long responsibility that, at one point, belonged to another man. That takes a love that goes beyond biology. This man was the Daddy that looked into my eyes and caught a glimpse of another man's genes, but saw only me. He comforted me the first time I cried over a boy, he oh-so-patiently taught me how to drive on a stick shift, he gently zipped me into my prom dress then gave my date a rather unsettling evil-eye, he cried when he dropped me off at college, he knew I was going to marry the man that is now my husband years before I did, and he recently walked me down the aisle. This Daddy is my absolute hero and now, a painfully short 19 years since our first "hello", I'm trying to figure out how in the hell to say "goodbye."

I had just gotten off the phone with my Mom, she had called to update me on my Dad. Dad was ill, it was neurological and she needed to let me know that he was possibly dying. I sat on our beautiful, deep, covered porch for a little while after that. I stared into the deceptively calm waters of St. Andrew's Bay and knew that I needed to get those weighing words off my heart. You see, we had been dating for just over 5 of the 15 years we had been friends. I knew he wanted to marry me, and I knew he wouldn't take what I was going to say as a threat. He just suffered from the knight-in-shining-armor-syndrome where if it wasn't absolutely perfect, it wasn't good enough for his girl; I needed to release him from having to make his proposal picture-perfect.

I said what I needed to say and stared into his mesmerizing blue eyes, oh those eyes, and my then-boyfriend, grabbed my hands and said to me, "that's not selfish, I don't blame you, and I honestly wouldn't be able to forgive myself either." That man very quickly became my fiance, just as quickly became my husband and, a much slower, 17 months later became my husband a second time. Because he is wonderful. We are wonderful. And this is our story. A true story. A true, albeit unbelievable, story of a friendship and love lasting and thriving over time, distance, travel, heartache, growth, learning, careers, AOL, cell phones, text messaging, illness and two weddings. Our story proves that God does send our perfect match to us. Our story proves that long-distance CAN work. Our story proves that love conquers all, and that puppy love DOES last forever.