It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, Jules, and my mother. My parents were in love, they told me, from the first time they met when my mother was traveling through Europe with her sisters, all with backpacks on their backs. My father was with a couple of army buddies and they met in a bar. At the end of the backpacking trip, my mother stayed to be with my father in Germany on his army base.

Cue up the whirlwind courtship and marriage.

I don’t know when my father went from being in Special Forces in the army to working for the U.S. government in undercover operations. Not even my mother knew exactly when things changed. It wasn’t something he was allowed to talk about. He still “deployed,” but sometimes he would leave on a dime. Twice a helicopter actually came to get him. He had a bachelor’s degree in criminology and a master’s in international relations from an Ivy League school. He was smart and quick. He was gentle and compassionate. He was driven and focused and brave. He was a family man.

He was shot to death, set on fire by rebels, then dumped in a ditch where he was found by U.S. military forces out searching for him. The rebels who attacked him were hunted down and killed by the army, their cement compound destroyed and leveled until it was a smoking, lifeless ruin.

It did not bring my father back. The grief was all-consuming. The rage at what they did to him was all-consuming. My mother, Jules, and I each cried an ocean of tears, often standing in the ocean at our beach, those tears literally reaching the waves. The horror of what had happened to my father, the vision, was unbearable.

A few days after he died, I told Jules and my mother the story about the brave mermaid who lost her scales because of kind acts toward others. Jules told us a story that our dad had told her about a magical unicorn who helped everyone see color in their lives, like our mother’s flowers, instead of gray and black.

My mother told us our father would always be with us in our hearts, in the stories he told, in the hugs he gave us, in the songs he sang, in the laughter we shared. “He’ll be with you in how you live your lives, girls. He’ll be with you in the lessons he taught you, the morals he gave you, the generosity and kindness that he showed you. He’s here on the wind, he’s standing in the ocean with us, he’s in our flower garden, and at Rose Bloom Cottage. We can remember him reading books with us, drinking tea, and baking cakes. Love never dies, it’s always with us, he’s with us.”