Forward

All my life I have longed to live in a small town, to be part of an extended family and a close-knit community where the support system is strong, where everyone knows and loves me, warts and all. Where we have a shared history and we all belong to one another through thick and thin. Where we all can relax and enjoy the simple everydayness of home. Krisanne has been lucky enough to have lived just that kind of life.

In her book Daddy Bill Didn’t Come for Coffee Today you have the extraordinary experience of stepping into her life. She shares with such tenderness and candor the grief she feels over the death of her father that you fall in love with her family, MeMe, Daddy Bill and English, Indiana.

If you were to have dinner with Krisanne, as I had the pleasure of doing not long ago (and with Jeffey, too), you would meet this incredible, tiny little spitfire with teased blond hair and lipstick that doesn’t seem to fade. She’d have rings on nearly every finger and they all would seem to look perfectly necessary on her tiny hands. But more than anything else, you would be overwhelmed by her love and generosity; you’d be amazed at her own vulnerability, her openness, and her willingness to share that love. She might say things like, “Well let’s just get right down to it—how old are you?” or, “How do you feel about being a clone of your mother?” and when you look slightly incredulous, “Oh, you haven’t accepted that yet. You will.” She’d tell you all the good things she observed about you and your family. She’d make each of you feel loved and important. I think that’s a gift she has because her Daddy Bill and her tiny town of English have always made her feel that way.

Most of us are too private to share our inner most thoughts and feelings with the world, even if the shared humanity might be good for us. I don’t want everyone to know that thirty years after the death of my father I can still unexpectedly weep “I want my daddy.” But Krisanne is brave enough to share her pain, her anger, her intimate grieving with us. By doing so she gives us the gift of remembering our own loved ones. We don’t have to feel quite as alone or abnormal about our many stages of grief.

Krisanne does so much more than grieve in this book. She shares her family with us. She rejoices in her God and in her abiding faith. She shows us the love she shared with her father and the special relationship they had. We see English, the small town America that is part of us all. We fall in love with her family. Of course to see Daddy Bill, his strength and his humor, through the adoring eyes of his daughter is to fall in love with him; but I don’t think I’ve known a stronger, more gracious woman than Meme. For a few short hours we laugh and we cry, we pray and we dream, we remember and we share because we, too, belong to a tight-knit community, and to a loving extended family with a faith in God strong enough to see us through the many joys and hurts life brings our way.

Kelli Bell, Cincinnati, Ohio