Jesus is knocking at my door today.

            Dear, sweet, Jesus.

            I never know what will hit me to turn me into a crying mess and I end up praying to my Jesus.  Call me a big baby, I don’t care.  Today, in the never-ending jab at organizing files, and a losing-my-mind search for a document that I just cannot find, I come across a letter from Daddy.

            Open the little, faded envelope, with his blue-pen block handwriting on it, addressed to me.

            Oh boy, here I go.

            July 24, 1978.

            Hi Love,

            I have so much good news to tell you.  Please send me your tel. no.  My address is Rocky Hill Vet Home & Hospital, Rocky Hill, Conn.  Love, Dad.  P.S.  I plan to be in Stamford Aug. 8^th & 9^th.  See you then.  Love again.

            I wonder about the good news.  There was never any good news about Daddy back then, when I was nineteen years old.  Two postcards with photos of the Vet Home are in the envelope, too.  One addressed to Barbara, the other to Maria, and both ask how are you?  Love, Daddy.  If Donna got a postcard, she probably ripped it up and chucked it out.

            A year later, Daddy is dead. 

            And I still wonder what life would have been like with him. 

            “Say a prayer,”  Mom would say, as advice for something to go well, or for a wish, or a want.  Dear, sweet, Jesus.  My words of the prayer of the heart beg Jesus to have mercy on blue me, a lousy sinner, a lousy thinker, a lousy everything today.

            Yet, in spite of my lousy tears, Daddy’s words, “Hi Love” are a hug, a kiss, a joy, and, in some remarkable way, are knocking at my door.