Happy Father's Day Dad! We will be together today thinking of you and praying that God keep you close always. Love you. 

Happy Birthday Dad! Missing you and hope you are celebrating with your parents! xo 

Merry Christmas Dad, Ada is not old enough yet, but when she is she will be leaving kulecha and chai for an eager santa/dad. We will be thinking of you and missing you. 

We had a nice night together in your name, we made you a cake and made sure to have your favorite desserts on hand - we remember your sweet tooth.

We love you xoxoxo

We miss you dearly Dad, especially today. I can't believe how much it hurts 3 years on...Please keep giving us signs and dreams, we are listening, we hear you.  All of our love is with you. 

Happy Birthday Dad! We miss you and hope you are celebrating in heaven! 

Happy Easter Dad! Thinking of you especially and thanking you for my name and all those bunny stuffed animals and bunny birthday cakes xo Love and miss you soooooo much xoxoxoxo

 

Missing You

Dad,

I started studying for the bar exam last week.  In reading about personal literary property I remembered when I was really young and I asked you how I could make sure that no one else would claim my poems as their own.  You actually took me seriously, and you told me that I could mail them to myself and leave the letters unopened, and if I ever needed to prove that the poems were my own, I could just bring those letters to court and the postmark would prove I had the poems first. You knew so much about so many random areas of law, and you would say how all the lawyers that worked for you would call you up to ask you legal questions.  You were really something else Dad...You were talented and you were smart...I remember how you said, " If I was born in this country, I would have been president!" I bet you would have :)

Thank you for all you taught me and for all the times you took the time to humor me, encourage me and even take me seriously to teach me something.

Eddie, I remember the first time you brought Phyllis and me to Sahara for dinner.  Nawal, Ryan, and Jacob were there too.  The waiter kept talking to you in Sureth and was visibly making fun of me, not being or speaking Chaldean at all.  After a few of these exchanges, you told me to listen as you whispered something to me.  On your instruction, when the waiter came back, I barked at him, "Najib, me-thee-lee smoothie".  You exploded in laughter and the waiter nearly dropped his tray.  But he also promptly brought a smoothie back for me.  Eddie, you always made me laugh, and at times when it mattered and, times it didn't, you had my back.

Dad,
We don't want to have Christmas this year without you. All of our Christmas days growing up revolved around you and mom. Mom did all this shopping and wrapping and tried desperately to keep the presents hidden from us kids. You pretended to be santa, I think out of us older kids you did it for me the most. I was really into the idea of leaving cookies and milk. You told me santa would rather have kulehtcha and chai, so mom would help me make up a plate for "santa" and she would rush me (and the rest of us brats) off to bed.

I remember the year, I don't know maybe I was six or seven, that I realized "santa" was you and mom, and specifically that you were the one eating the kulehtcha and chai! Every year you left me a note from "santa", that before I could read mom would read to me. Then the year that I was pretty able to read on my own, I noticed that the handwriting was yours on the note. I don't know how, I must have seen things around the house you or mom wrote and started to distinguish whose writing was whose without really thinking about it. Anyway, I had started to become suspicious of "santa" already, but that year I also found out the writing was yours and I knew that you were santa, and that you had always been santa. I realized then and there, how much you wanted me to be happy and how much you loved me.

Though we won't have Christmas this year, I will always think of you like santa, even when me and my husband are pretending for our kids. I will remember to tell my kids that santa prefers kulehtcha and chai to cookies and milk.  I love you.