Loved you, Papa

I printed several of this last year's status reports in preparation for the current dreary task of forming a self-appraisal for company evaluation. I squared up the pile of printouts and flipped through the stack, skimming the "Issues and Notes" section at the bottom of each status report in search of a particular set of work details. I wasn't expecting to see one of the entries:

Loved you, Papa.

It's been nearly 6 months now. And yet how quickly that lump still forms in my throat. A week or so after my father died, I had written up my status report, giving an account of my time. Accomplishment this, accomplishment that, a handful of meetings. Yet my mind and heart had been elsewhere; my life had been changed. I wanted to say *something* about that in my status report. Status reports are cold, impersonal; not a place to spell out life issues. Who would care? I didn't expect any coworkers to comment, didn't expect any sympathy. It was just something I needed to do, to not forget, to not gloss over the event. In that moment in July, I stuck a symbol of my life into that status report, a detail about what really mattered, like carving my initials and date on a tree: "All this other stuff doesn't matter, Papa. I loved you, and you loved me. I'll remember."