letters to my father

My father passed away unexpectedly on January 28, 2011. I keep writing him letters and blog posts in my head. It seemed like the only way to keep them from bouncing around there would be to write them down. That’s what this blog is for. To help me get through this and to help me remember.

You almost never answered my phone calls without a joke.

“Hey Dad, it’s me” I’d say, knowing you’d recognize my voice.
“Me who?”
“It’s Bonnie, Dad.”
“No, I’m Dad.”

“Dad!” At this point I’d huff and we’d be able to begin our conversation. Sometimes you made me clarify that I was your daughter, and not just your daughter, but your middle daughter. Even if the words were sometimes different, the pattern was always the same. Sometimes I’d answer your question with “your daughter” and you’d follow that with “which one?” You always knew it was me, but it didn’t matter. Life was just a little more fun for you if you could yank my chain a bit.

When the girls and I were kids, you reveled in tormenting us in little ways. You’d come down from the shower with your beard still wet–your beard was epic in the 1980s Dad, garnering comparisons to Grizzly Adams and Jerry Garcia–and stand over us and shake your head, sprinkling cold droplets on us while we shrieked. You’d drink a glass of milk and then perform your disgusting dribbling spit trick. You’d take off your stinky, horrible, sweaty socks at the end of a day out working in the field and throw them at us, hoping we’d be forced to take a big whiff of them. One night, when I struggled to stay awake, you took a magic marker and wrote “I am not asleep” in your neat block letters across the bottom of my foot. I didn’t wake up while you were doing it and you felt triumphant that you’d proved your point.

As exasperating as you could be, you teased us because it was one of the ways you told us you loved us. You weren’t a man who spent a lot of time with his heart on his sleeve; I can only remember you crying 2 or 3 times in my entire life. Sometimes you had no idea what to do with me, your super emotional middle child. But I’ve always known how much you loved me, how much you loved all three of us, and how thrilled you were that you were our Dad. I’ve never, not once, doubted how much you wanted us girls, how proud you were. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I love you with a fierceness and in a way I know I’ll never love anyone else. Because you are my not just my father, you’re my Dad, and no one will ever fill this gap in my heart. I miss you.