2006 was by far one of the craziest years I have lived to date.  The highs and lows that year brought were extreme and there was not a lot of mellowing out in between.  In 2006 I found out my father had terminal cancer, I quit my job to take care of him, my father passed just over 6 weeks after his diagnosis, I got engaged and I traveled extensively.  To read, it may not sound like a lot but trust me – there was a lot of living in that sentence.  Needless to say, 2006 was a wild year.

While losing a parent is NEVER easy, losing my Dad was an exceptionally hard blow to me.  My Mom & brother both died when I was 13 so from then on, it was just me and my Dad.  While I did miss my Mom & brother very much, I never felt that I was lacking with “only” my father.  Even from when I was a baby, I was always a Daddy’s girl and we were always close.  We just grew much more so when it became just us.  My Dad was my best friend, my mom, my dad and even my brother.

When I found out my father had cancer and did not have long to live, my first question to him was what did he want to do with the time he had left.  His first reply was to see the beach one last time.  For us, “the beach” wasn’t just any old beach, but the Outer Banks – where we had traveled just about every year to from when I was a kid.  It was my father’s favorite place on earth and his long standing joke was that someday he was going to live in a cardboard box on the beach if that was what it took to live there.  We had already had a trip planned for that September (one of our favorite times to visit) but it quickly became apparent to us that September was too far off for us to wait, despite the doctors assuring us he had at least 6 months.  Since my job wouldn’t give me the time off to take my Dad on his last trip, I quit and off we went with a little over a week to plan.

The trip would have been heart wrenching no matter what – but sadly this was the week my Dad ended up taking a turn for the worse.  I think the tropical storm that hit during our trip didn’t help matters (weather fronts had always been hard on him due to an old leg injury) and the 12 hour car ride did not do us any favors.  Still, the smile on his face when he smelled the ocean was worth every single squeeze my heart took.  While we were there, he told me that his wishes for his funeral were to have his ashes brought back to the beach and spread.  I agreed.

After my Dad’s passing in August, we made the already planned trip to the Outer Banks with my Dad’s best friend and his wife (whom have taken me in since my Dad’s passing and are second parents to me now) to spread my Dad’s ashes.  If you’ve never spread someone’s ashes… it’s hard to describe.  It hurts like nothing you have hurt before but yet it’s freeing knowing that you are doing what the person wanted and they will always be a part of something they loved.  We spread his ashes at night on one of the most amazing nights I’ve ever seen on the beach.  There was a full moon and MOUNDS of sea foam, nothing like I’ve ever seen before there.  A year later, we would return to the same beach to get married and last year we visited again.  When I go there, I know Dad is around me and is happy to be where he loved, forever.

Rob and Nancy left the following day and Chris and I were kind of adrift.  The weather turned and wasn’t quite warm enough for the beach.  I was still working through a lot of emotions from the past few months.  We decided to just drive and sightsee and be complete tourists.  I took along my new Nikon D200 which I was still figuring out.  We ended up going all of the way to Ocracoke during our meanderings and I took what is still, to date, one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.  I think it’s because the image encapsulates everything that I was feeling at the moment and in a way, I was taking a picture of my Dad.  I can be awfully corny at times and I sometimes think Dad helped press the shutter that day so I would have this beautiful reminder of where he will always be and what beauty he is now a part of.

Thanks for listening to all of my rambles!  This is a picture I have wanted to post for a long time.  I am finally ordering it as a canvas and can’t wait to have it on my wall to make me smile whenever I’m feeling a bit sad.

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Corey Ann

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