Three months after my husband Keith died, our daughter Katie insisted on attending her school’s father-daughter dance.<\/p>\n
“Dad promised he’d take me every year,” she whispered. “I want to go for him.”<\/p>\n
I helped her into the dress he’d picked out, fighting back tears.<\/p>\n
At school, fathers danced with their daughters beneath colorful balloons. Katie sat beside me, watching quietly.<\/p>\n
“Mom, can we go home?”<\/p>\n
Before I could answer, a woman from the PTA approached.<\/p>\n
“Some events are meant for complete families,” she remarked.<\/p>\n
“My daughter has a father,” I replied. “He died serving this country.”<\/p>\n
Katie buried her face against my arm.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the gym doors opened.<\/p>\n
Twelve Marines entered, led by General Warner. He knelt before Katie.<\/p>\n
“Your dad made us promise we’d be here if he couldn’t.”<\/p>\n
Then he handed her a letter written in Keith’s handwriting.<\/p>\n
“Put on your pretty dress and dance, Ladybug. I’ll always be in your heart.”<\/p>\n
Katie began crying.<\/p>\n
One Marine extended his hand.<\/p>\n
“May I have this dance?”<\/p>\n
“Only if you know the chicken dance!” she laughed.<\/p>\n
Soon, Katie was dancing with her father’s entire unit.<\/p>\n
On our way home, she squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n
“Mom, can we come again next year?”<\/p>\n
I smiled through my tears.<\/p>\n
“Of course, sweetheart.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three months after my husband Keith died, our daughter Katie insisted on attending her school’s father-daughter dance. “Dad promised he’d take me every year,” she whispered. “I want to go for him.” I helped her into the dress he’d picked out, fighting back tears. At school, fathers danced with their daughters beneath colorful balloons. Katie …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11180,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions\/11180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}