Deputy Sheriff Steven Ziegler

Dad,
It’s November 10th, 2022. You won’t believe this, but inevitably I have became my mother, haha. I am sitting in 7th grade English, behind the teacher’s desk. I am starting my Masters soon. I think about you every day. Reading a book to my students, the character lost their parent. I told them the feelings the character went through, knowing them all too well. Memories locked in a vault and never forgotten. Small details and smirks, a pen laying on the maroon red carpet of your blue and white Ford truck, your cowboys cut up hoodie or how you’d answer the phone, “Yellow.” I explained how as time wickedly moves on, the pain becomes normal and life resuming becomes a sting of guilt. I tell two little girls all about you all the time. They look to the sky and see you there. I wish you could toss them in the air or teach them how to cut the rack off a bucks head. I’ll never forget how you flicked the remaining into the leaves. Slightly stomach turning, but a memories still yet. Haha. I miss you terribly. Living in Fredericktown I know you miss the days I’d sit, or sometimes nap beside you in the cemetery. I’m sure your flowers are faded, but I carry you brightly with me every where. Time does not change my heart beating one less on its way to joining you. I thankfully found every inch of happiness on this Earth you’d want me to have. I remember to say what needs said. You teach me still with every thing of you that lingers behind. The leaves have fallen on your favorite season and I pray the bucks are huge in Heaven. Forever missing, loving, and looking for you, Loren

Daughter

November 10, 2022