oh how 7 years go so fast...

we were sitting at billy & linda barnette's house -143 greenway court. only now it was linda barnette's. billy passed away 7 years ago tonight. jan and will haas were there with us. and i think jerry and bethanie defatta. it's all a blur.

billy found out he had cancer a little over a month after tommy and i started dating. he fought this disease harder than anybody i've ever seen.

partly because the barnette's are so dang stubborn. and yes, this shows in my child at times.

but mostly because he had suffered with rheumatoid arthritis for so long that his pain tolerance was surreal. you could call him after a morning of chemo and ask how he was doing and he'd tell you he was fine.

what a lie.

but he didn't want us to worry.

we were there. tommy, me, and linda. in the room when he took his last breath. this is so hard to type and all of a sudden it's like i am there again - and, great, now i'm all teared up again, too. my grandfather had just died a month before and i was with him, too, and recognized the "death rattle". if you have ever heard it, you know what i mean. i told tommy and linda that he was about to go. they didn't want it to be the end. i didn't either. but all 3 of us wanted him out of pain and we had been praying for God to have mercy - and the only mercy was death.

the death wasn't as hard to me as my husband's reaction.

tommy wanted to say one more thing to his dad - just ONE MORE THING. i can hear him saying now, "Dad!!! Dad look at me!"

but it was over. billy had let go of our hands and was at the feet of Jesus. it was such a bittersweet time. our pastor, brother mark anderson, came right over to hospice. as did so many friends/family. bob and vickie spring. i know they came. i'm so blank on the rest. i just remember how much it impressed me that brother mark came over at the drop of a hat (i think it impressed me, too, because i knew he had 4 children and a wife at home and it was a school night!).

i miss him.

i want my baby to know him.

i want her to know what a giving, loving man he was.

i want her to be able to "ride horsey" on his knee like tommy's cousin's child did.

i want him to go with her to Ole Miss football games so that she can see who instilled that love in her daddy - who has very obviously passed it on to her.

i want him to take her on dates to see how a man should treat a lady.

i want him to be there at Christmas to see her little face light up - she would have more than she could ever play with or ask for.

i want him to see her continue grow up into a beautiful young lady.

but God had other plans.

so now she will know him. her pap-paw. through the stories we tell her and the pictures we show. he deserves that. and if he were here, she'd be more rotten than she already is.

billy, we love you so much and miss you more and more every day. thank you for everything.