15 years

This is a hard post to write, so it probably won't be long.

Val Dudley 8/15/1967 - 7/12/1997

I love this picture.  Sure there are better pictures of him, where he is clean, and you can tell that he is actually a white man.  But to me this picture shows so many things about him that I miss everyday.  Check out that smile, it doesn't get more sincere than that.

This next picture is the road where the car accident happened.  Jesse took a trip out there and took this picture, of course getting artsy with his Jeep (doubt he will ever buy another brand of car).

For those who don't know, this is the dirt road leading from Park City, UT to East Canyon Reservoir.  From the time I was one, my parents ran the marina, so this road was traveled multiple times a day, especially this summer because we were finishing up our house.  That night my dad and uncle Patrick picked me up from a friends house, and we headed to the lake to meet my mom, Jesse, and extended family.  The car was a 1993 Jeep Rangler, topless and suped up.  It was 1997, so of course we weren't wearing our seat-belts.  We came around a corner and there was a boulder in the middle of the road. We hit it and started rolling, I fell out on the first roll, mostly uninjured, and my Dad and Patrick were flung from the car.  Both hitting trees, Patrick shattered his leg and my dad hit head first, resulting in severe brain damage. He died a couple of hours later.

I keep trying to make a list of all of the things I love, miss, and learned from my dad, but my fingers can't seem to type them.  Bottom line, he has been the best guardian angel, and I don't know what I would do without him as my angel.  He's the reason I believe this, he's the reason I keep living, he's the reason I am still alive, and so many other things. Every day I strive to live up to his example, but the bar is set pretty high.  I can't wait until I see him again, but in the mean time, I will try to love life as much as he did.