You were born...long ago...long ago...long ago...long ago!!!!

Happy 50th Birthday Daddy! Wouldn't it of been the biggest birthday of your life so far? Pretty exciting if you ask me...but God had other plans. Not sure why he had to take you a week after your 49th birthday, but alas, He did (and He knows better than us all).

Last year I spent the longest time attempting to find you the funniest possible birthday card. I finally settled on a sound card that read:

Outside: Today is your birthday, an occasion of joy and glee, a national holiday it should be soon! I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be except for here to sing you this tune!

(There's a silly looking sock puppet with a cape and a birthday hat on...)

Then you open it up and it sings:

"You were born, long ago....long ago, long ago, lonnnnng ago!!!!" in a very operatic voice to the tune of "Figaro"....

And it reads:

Inside: Hope your birthday begins and ends on a happy note!

And I wrote:

"Haha, Happy Birthday Daddy! OLD GUY! Love you and miss you! Donielle.

You got this card late, I called a bunch of times to see if you had gotten it, but because you lived in Hawaii it took you forever to get it. So just a few days before you died you got my awesome card, and it made you laugh just like I knew it would. And just a few weeks later I got your birthday card back when I went to Hawaii to help Mom pack up your stuff so she could leave Hawaii. I keep it with some of your things I have at my house...it's the last card I ever sent, and the last card you ever received. If I'd of known that it was going to be the last birthday card you would ever read I probably would have written something like this:

Dear Dad,

I want to tell you how much I love you. I also want to thank you for everything you ever gave me, my love for music, food, and for people, my passion for life, and my sense of humor. You'll never know just how much you mean to me. And by the way, you're old! But that's okay, cause 49 isn't 50, right? 50 is when you're REALLY, REALLY old! ;-)

Love you from the bottom of my heart, and I can't wait to come visit you soon!

Donielle

So...yeah. Sad day. What is usually one of the biggest birthday's of a person's life, my Dad never made it to...instead a few days after he read that card he woke up with horrible neck pain and by the end of the day he had died of a massive myocardial infarction. Quick. Done. Dead. There wasn't a thing anyone could have done differently to change the result, it was just his time to go.

Almost a year later we get to celebrate without you, for you...Happy 50th Birthday Daddy. I miss you more than you can ever imagine. Promise me you're up there looking looking in on us from time to time.

I love you.

Melbell.

(for those of you who don't know "Mel" is my family nickname...my cousin Brandon couldn't pronounce my name when we were younger so he called me "Duhmel", which was shortened to "Mel" and given variations of "Ssssssmel"-how a snake would say Mel given to me by my Uncle Mike (of course it's my Dad's brother, do you even have to ask?), and "Melbell"-the nickname my Dad gave me).