One year ago today, I sood on the side lines, cheering Tony's hockey team onto victory.  They won the championship in a cliff hanger.  We cheered, we laughed, we took pictures as they posed with their trophies and then I came home to say good bye to my friend and mentor and yes, my first love, my father.

I can't believe it's been a year since he died.  I can't believe he died.  I'm sure that if I turn my head quickly, I'll catch him standing in the shadows, watching to make sure I set the emergency brake in my car or turned off the lights and locked the doors.  As much as he watched over me, I can't believe that he finally trusted me enough to leave me alone.

It's not as though it were sudden or unexpected.  He left, in bits and pieces, over the last ten years of his life.  My father suffered from a form of dementia