It comes in threes - they say.

My Father, Tiggers Caousin, and now my grandfather.

Dick Trehearn meant much more to me than my own Dad did, and Im not sure he knows that.
When I was 15, he took me for icecream. My own Father never did that.
When I was 16, He made me a rolling pin. He offered to build me to scale a case to hold all my unicorn statues in. It was never made, but Im sure if I had sent him spec's, it would have been.

And just this year, failing as he was, he made me a sugar bowl. Its beautiful. Ill never use it, but Ill never get rid of it either.

When I announced my engagement to the Tigger, He and grandma came out to meet him. No one else did. Not my Father, not my sister, no one... but Grandpa and Grandma.

I think, though my interactions with him have been so very limited, he was more a Father to me than anyone else ever has been. (Ian doesnt count - although I will never discount all those fabulous mornings, and all the smokes, and all the singing in the rain - He was an amazing dad/brother crossover, but Grandpa - he sticks more in my mind as "Pater Familus" - Father.)

There is a high, high cost to being so blessed as I have been, to have so many families claim you as thier own, to being, in the end, so wanted and loved as I have been.
You have so much more to lose.

1 Year is not long enough when you live so far away.
1 Year is not long enough when the "knowing" part of you hopes its a much shorter sentence.
1 Year is not long enough, when the selfish, defiant, human part of you is hoping for 10.
1 Year is not enough, when the realistic part of you knows it wont be even that long.

and so I ask - how much can I take?
How much loss can one survive and not go mad?
How much stress can one person take on thier mental capacities?

Stress....
Am I glass, wood, or iron?
How many times can a sword be reforged to become stronger before it simply becomes brittle?
How long till I shatter?