My Daughter Went to the Father Daughter Dance Alone Until a Dozen Marines Walked In

a small ceremony.

She looked at herself in the mirror for a moment. Then she looked at me.

“I miss Daddy,” she said. It was not a complaint or a cry for comfort. It was simply a statement of the plain and enormous truth, offered in the matter-of-fact tone she sometimes used for things that were too large for any other register.

“I know, sweetheart,” I continue reading …