I remember his smile, his laugh, the way he looked at me with love, especially the last day we spoke – especially the last moment when our eyes met.
I turned and walked through the door of my childhood home, unaware my life was about to be blasted to bits.
For 20 years, I’ve lived on memory. July 9, 2006 is seared into my brain, and today, I mark it as a significant milestone in my life.
I lost my daddy that day and lost the nurturing protection of being a child of sorts, even at the biological age of 39.
Perhaps we are never grown up until we lose our parents. We may not be dependent on them physically nor financially, but mentally and emotionally, they are the safety net that hangs securely and faithfully beneath our lives. They are ever-present. Until death arrives.
Maybe you understand. The world is one way with the people who always shared your joys and disappointments, and then the world is another way.
Your parents have been torn away. You are stranded on an island, and now you must figure out how to survive on your own, staring at a featureless sea with sand for a foundation.
Loss forces change
My first task was planning my father’s funeral. I selected a place, a preacher and pallbearers. I picked out the music, Great is Thy Faithfulness. Perhaps an odd selection on its face.
At church the day Dad died, the words of the hymn had been voiced to the congregation. The words we’d heard together a few hours before his death became an affirmation and an anchor.
Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with thee.
Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not;
As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.
In the midst of meteoric change, we needed a God who was unchanging. I didn’t know what was ahead for my mother and me, but already life had become an unfamiliar and insecure place.
Not only had I lost my father on July 9, 2006, but I had lost my mother, at least in the way I had known her.
Our relationship shifted that day. She was terminally ill with a lung condition. I became her caregiver. The parent, of sorts. But inside myself, I was still a child. And I needed my mother.
A couple of nights before the 20th anniversary of my father’s death, I went outside to my swing on the deck and had a long talk with Dad. I had survived so much in 20 years. Heavy tears fell as I absorbed the gravity of the timeline. And yet today, the actual anniversary, I am calm.
That’s not unusual. The author of a Psychology Today article on May 23, 2025 noted, “I and many others have found that the anxiety surrounding the anticipation of the day tends to be worse than the day itself.” You can read that article here.
On that day 20 years ago, I set out on a journey. It was a new way of growing up. As perhaps with a toddler, the first three years were the hardest.
I marched right into a relationship with a police officer who dropped into my inbox the week after the funeral. I was looking for a protector. His confident presence gave me a place to rest.
But the mind and emotions aren’t at their best with fresh grief. A trifecta of loss rained down on me in the months that followed. My father’s death, my mother’s illness and Jeff’s departure was almost too much. I despaired of life.
God was building something important in me, however. I survived to meet and marry Richard. The weeks after our engagement, my soul was as unburdened as a child’s.
At my mother’s funeral four months later, my cousin, Lynn, gave the eulogy. She pointed out my new husband shared Dad’s first name. I think God was winking at me on setting that up.
Growth on the heels of grief
Marriage is beautiful and hard. It will grow you up or tear the two of you apart.
If you’ve followed me on Facebook the past 12 months or so, you know it has been one of our most challenging periods of our wedded bliss.
We bought a fixer-upper house, which surprised us with thousands of dollars of plumbing issues. The air-conditioning system failed at our old house only hours after the sales contract had been signed. My mother-in-law moved in for a month. My dog was diagnosed with cancer. I injured my back putting a paving stone on his grave. A ruptured disc crashed house DIY plans.
The year-long odyssey hopefully ends this month with a path toward healing my body.
In the swing a few nights ago, the list of ups and downs spanned 20 years, however.
Included was the cleaning out of my childhood home over an eight-year period. Falling in love with two children who needed our protection. The deaths of all my remaining uncles and aunts. And a career milestone – traveling to New York City after winning a national essay contest.
There’s a lot between those sentences. There’s a lot of growing up.
Do we ever actually reach the end of growing up? I think not. I think there is always something to learn, challenges to face, mountains to surmount.
Even this past month, as I huddled close to my husband in conversation about our present physical challenges, I told him, “We need our parents.”
Getting through grief anniversary milestones
A milestone anniversary will emphasize the depth of a loss, but it also can feature continued bonds even death cannot touch. Love doesn’t break.
A milestone should point us to who and what gave us the endurance that carried us through difficult times and offered moments of beauty. Of rest.
Across the last 20 years – across the uncertainty, drama and beauty – God has been a constant. He carried me through the valleys and up the mountains.
And he can be trusted to do so in the future. He is faithful. That’s where my eyes went today.
As I began the day, I looked for a song to carry the 20-year anniversary’s depth. My mind scanned for songs I’d played two decades ago.
At first, I could not think of one. And then Great is Thy Faithfulness came to mind. Its words and the last stanza really sum up the past two decades – and a vision for the future.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine and ten thousand beside.
How long has it been? If you embraced a grieving ritual during the anniversary, let us know how it impacted you.
Copyright © 2026 by Toni Lepeska. All rights reserved.
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