By Katarina Bohn 
I was 17 years old and a senior in high school when my father passed away after a lengthy battle with congestive heart failure. He was frail and ill for much of my young adulthood, and I spent years coming to terms with the knowledge that he would not live to see me through my adult life and the many milestones that come along with it.
I graduated from both high school and college without my dad in the audience, cheering me on. I walked down the aisle of my church toward the altar and the arms of my future husband without my father by my side. A few years after that, I stood in my bathroom looking down at a pregnancy test with a plus sign displayed prominently in the center. Nine months later, I gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby boy…who looked just like my dad.
The feeling of looking down at your newborn and seeing the face of a loved one who has passed on is indescribable. Before our son was born, my husband and I shared our thoughts and overwhelming excitement with one another almost daily regarding which of us our son would resemble. Would he have my husband’s chin and my eyes? Would he have my thick, frizzy mop of hair or my husband’s slightly wavy, more manageable locks? I still remember the jolt of shock and joy I felt as I took in our son’s long, skinny limbs and tiny ears that jutted out from the sides of his head. My father’s ears, without a doubt. My father’s eyes peered up at me as well. Eyes that welled up with tears as my son cried and whimpered, but eyes that were unmistakably the same color and shape as my dad’s. My own eyes filled with tears as I realized I was being given an incredible gift: a tiny piece of someone I loved in heaven returned to earth in the form of my newborn son.
As my son grew from infancy to toddlerhood, it was clear his appearance was not the only thing he had in common with my father. As my dad aged and grew weaker, it was difficult to convince him that he could no longer safely take part in the same activities he enjoyed as a younger man. I vividly recall the day I came home from school to find my mom at the base of a ladder propped against our house, her eyes filled with worry. Atop the ladder, leaning on the edge of the roof, stood my father, cleaning out the gutters. Ignoring my mother’s pleas and protests for him to climb down, my father chuckled and shouted, “You both worry too much, I’m fine!” My son at 3 years old spent hours careening around our home, jumping and sliding across our kitchen floor as I followed him, terrified he’d get hurt. I remember the day he looked back at me after a particularly eventful afternoon of ruckus and shouted, with a gleam in his eye, “Stop worrying, Mama, I is fine!” His eyes, my father’s eyes, sparkled with joy, and eventually I did stop worrying (briefly anyway).
Now my son is 15, and he has a laugh I remember from my childhood. It is my father’s laugh; a sharp, abrupt sound that bursts out like a bark. With my father being ill so often, I didn’t hear him laugh nearly as much as I would have liked. My son, however, laughs constantly. I love the way that bark of a laugh fills our home and gives me a glimpse of what my dad’s laugh must have sounded like as a young boy. My father was most definitely a suit-and-tie kind of guy. He looked forward to weddings and celebrations and church events where he could don his finest attire. When my son wears a suit and tie and poses for pictures, I smile at the young version of my dad standing tall and proud, wiping the nonexistent speck of lint off his shoulder.
Although my father is no longer with me, I treasure the glimpses of him I see in my son. It is an incredible reminder that my father’s legacy will live on through my son forever.
by Lisa Leshaw 
by Angela Joyner 
