Only a person who has lost a dear one would understand the desperation to talk to them after you see a casket close on them. Dad’s voice was a mellifluous song to my ears. The fact that I couldn’t be there in the hospital with him when he took his last breaths had eaten me alive since his passing.

I was too stubborn, silly, and spoiled to tell him I loved him a million times. It would have put my heart at ease if I had said it even once when he was suffering.

It was not my ...