My Father And My Daughter

My father passed away in October of 1998. I became pregnant a few months later with my last child, which was a girl (what he had always wanted me to have) so she had never met him and vice versa.

When she was just over a year old, we moved into a new house and when I would put her to bed at night, she would lay in her crib and just giggle before she would finally fall asleep. She did this for a several months and I never really thought twice about it, I just thought she was amusing herself to fall asleep.
Then one day, she walked over to me, pointed to my fathers picture I had on the wall and said, "Papaw". Now mind you, she had never seen my father before and I had never told her who was in that picture. So, I looked at her and said, "where is your papaw?". She then took my hand, led me to the staircase, pointed up to her room and again said, "Papaw".

I tell that story to different people and most of them laugh at me. But I truly believe that it was my father up there playing with her until she went to sleep. He wanted nothing more than for me or my sister to have a granddaughter for him to spoil while he was alive. And neither one of us did. But within 6 months of his death we both became pregnant...with girls.