Anything can set off a memory. Today it was as I pulled over to let a funeral procession drive to a cemetery. I remembered sitting in the silent limo on our own drive to a cemetery. I remember every detail of that week.

After two hours of sleep on that Sunday morning, I woke up hoping it had all been a dream. Had that really happened yesterday? Did my sister really call and say the words, "Dad died"? It certainly wasn't supposed to happen like this. He was going to get well. He was going to make a full recovery. When my brothers and I finally arrived home that night, my mom kept saying, "I didn't think it was going to happen. I just didn't think he was going to die."

Every time the phone rang, I was sure it was going to be someone, I don't know who, telling us it was all a mistake, or a joke. That dad was actually doing just fine, and would be coming home soon. I really did think that. Now I drive by funeral homes and my stomach drops when I see cars in the parking lots. What a strange thing to pick out a casket, to buy a cemetery plot, to plan a funeral program for someone who was going to live.

That week was by far, the worst week of my life. And yet. And yet it was also a wonderful week. To be surrounded by my brothers, my sister, their spouses and my mother as we talked, mourned, planned, and waited for the funeral and open house was incredibly healing. To know, that these people, these strong, intelligent, funny, wonderful people were mine, and that we have been sealed together is amazing.

In the end, I went home--to my own people. My children, my husband. I left my mother to deal with the every day fact that my dad wasn't there. And every now and then, as I'm looking through old pictures I'll see my dad's face and it will shock me. He's not here anymore. Isaac, whose middle name is my dad's will not know this man. Andrew, who was born on the one year anniversary of my dad's death, will not know the man with whom he shares an important date.

In two months, I'm headed home. And for the second time in my life, my dad won't be at the airport to meet me. Maybe after four hours in an airplane with four kids I won't care who meets me at the gate. But probably, I will remember.