Bronze Dinosaurs

Death is knocking at my door. Today is the day I will remember the rest of my soon to be short life. 

This Friday afternoon starts out as the typical end of a typical workweek, but this one changes everything. I work Saturdays only as required by engineering production schedules or as needed as determined by me based on workload. I don’t need to work this weekend so it’s out of here at 4:30.  Time to get out of the office and pick up my daughter, Amber, from her mother’s apartment. Amber is eight years old and has a wide grin with pretty eyes and dark coarse hair. She is the only daughter I will ever have and I love her because she is my child, because she is my youngest child, and because she is, well…Amber. This is the person that has me wrapped around her finger. We have a special relationship. I have played a major role in raising both my children. Teaching them, encouraging them, nurturing them and disciplining them when needed. Just as my father did for me. I am the one who makes arrangements at work when I need to pick them up from daycare or practice or attend school functions. I have continued the monthly lunch at school with Amber and her classmates that I started with Jerome when he was in grade school. She was a happy baby. Easy to laugh and playful, with a bright smile. Amber’s mother and I decided we wanted to try for a girl when our son Jerome was four and we were in the sixth year of our marriage. I thanked Amber’s mother, Kris once for making Amber a happy baby. Kris is partially responsible for Amber’s happy outlook because of the way she played with her as a baby. I enjoyed watching Kris playing with Amber and making her laugh.

A few months ago I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I left Amber in her mother’s new apartment. Amber wasn’t going to spend the night at our home. She was taken to a new home where I did not live. Leaving her there was more difficult than I can express, it brings tears to my eye this day just as it did that evening. But it was out of my hands. Being with our intact family would have been better, but that is no longer an option. So, I leave her a small picture of me in a small gold colored frame on her white chest of drawers. The rest of the white bedroom set we picked out for her, after it was time to leave the crib behind, is also in her new room. The slender tall spindle bedposts and chest of drawers look bare without the colorful painted decorations on the walls in her room at home. Little flowery decorations which Kris painted using a small brush, stencils, and paint. Orange, blue, red, yellow and the green I never liked. Amber’s bedroom at home is empty but the painted balloons & decorations are still there.