Today I was helping my mother look for her passport. We went through files and envelopes, tore apart drawers. No luck. We think she may have thrown out the new one she got a few years ago by mistake. The cancelled one is in the envelope.

As we were going through things, we found both of my father’s passports and I rustled through files filled with his handwritten notes on everything from investments to his cancer treatments and test results over the years. I teased Mom about throwing out her passport, whereas we probably can find every passport ever issued to Dad. He never threw away anything.

I eventually left to run some errands. As I walked down the main aisle at Walmart, an older couple approached me from the other direction. For just a second, I thought I was seeing my dad walking toward me. It brought tears to my eyes, and I wanted more than anything to go up to this stranger and ask him to hug me. He looked like the kind of man who might give his children big, strong squeezes like my dad used to give me.

Boy, I miss him. What I wouldn’t give for just one more hug.