Blog 328 – 06.30.2016
Starting tomorrow for the entire month of July I will be honoring my daughter Emily Elaine White who was born in July of 1980 and passed from this stage to a bigger and brighter one in July of 2012. I wrote a book about her entitled: Emily, The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Long. Through these episodes from her life and her music I intend for all the world to meet and fall in love with Emily. Today’s blog is the Preface to the book. Episodes or chapters to follow Monday’s every day in July. Normally I only post blogs on Monday through Friday but to celebrate “The Month of Emily I give you a month of Emily.

Preface

The Lost Little Book

I have heard it said that nothing is ever truly lost. My daughter, Emily left this stage shortly after her thirty-second birthday. No parent expects or wishes to out live their child but it happens all too often. Emily is not lost. I prefer to think that as they said of the orphans who died in the book and movie Cider House Rules that Emily just found a new family, an extended family.

Before she was born, when her Mom and I first knew she was coming, I began a little book for her. It started out a book of poems written to her so that she would always know that she was loved. After she came I added pictures to illustrate the book and so she would have them to to remind her of times she would not remember as she grew older.

I showed the little book to her throughout her childhood and gave it to her when she was in her teens hoping it would be a treasure to her and I think it was. After Emily died her cousin went through Em’s things and sent many of them to her Mom. Among them was the little book. Sandra, Emily’s Mom, mailed it to me in Baggs, Wyoming, where I was working at the time and it was lost in the mail. Sandra was very hurt at the lost but I figured it had served its purpose.

Some years ago before Emily left this life I borrowed the little book and scanned it intending to type it all up and perhaps try to get it published as a tribute of a father’s love for his little girl. The scanned copies have been misplaced or thrown out in one of my many moves since I separated from my fourth and final wife, Linda, Emily’s other mother, and began my life on the road.

Some months ago I had the thought that I wished more people could hear the songs Emily recorded some of which she wrote and the idea came to me to write the story of Emily’s Little Book and hopefully thereby introduce a larger audience to my precious girl with the aim that they might come to love her as I do and want to know more about her including her songs.

The Diary of Ann Frank and To Kill A Mockingbird had that effect on me and countless readers. Great Expectations perhaps but great intentions are often rewarded with great results. Therefore I submit the following recollections not of an unfinished life but a life lived completely. I hope something you read in these episodes of Emily’s life will stir your heart and create a hunger in you to know more about the little girl who taught me far more about love and life than I ever taught her.

Since I was a boy I have dreamed of one day being a famous speaker, poet, writer, singer/songwriter.  It would please me far more to be remembered as the Emily’s Dad, the “little girl who sang her song to anyone who came along.” That line is from a favorite song of hers and then mine that I think described her to a tee.

Your fellow traveler, and Emily’s Dad
David White