Hey Dad,
Today should be your 58th birthday. But you stopped at 57. Realistically, I knew you wouldn’t live forever, but I never imagined that you wouldn’t live at least long enough to be old and feeble minded and enjoying the home we picked out for you. You know, we promised you we’d find you one where you could drink beer and it would have a pool table. But you gave out long before that point. My heart is still so broken in a way I never would have thought possible and there are moments when your absence in my life seems like it’s far more consuming of my attention than your presence was. I wish you were still here, so I could call you today and tell you stories about how overgrown with weeds my yards are, about the baseball game I went to last week and about how I correctly diagnosed the leak in our toilet. These were the kinds of things we shared and I know you would have been pleased to hear them. You probably would have complained about getting old, you’ve been doing it for the past couple of years. You would have regaled me with stories of the school that you were working at, complained about whatever motley crew of animals you were keeping and probably complained about the heat. I certainly inherited my intolerance of hot weather from you and not from Mom, who I swear must be part lizard.

It’s taken me six and a half months to think about sitting down to write you a eulogy Daddy. I think that there’s a big part of me that hasn’t and doesn’t want to accept your death. It was so sudden, so out of nowhere and about 12 hours before I planned to call you and see how you were. I miss your voice, the way the answering machine always picked up before you could make it to the phone, but most of all I miss all the stories I will never hear about you. All the things you will never be. But here, right now, I’m going to try and write a short synopsis of what I knew you to be.

It’s virtually impossible to sum up in a few short paragraphs all that my father was. He was 5’10”, bald and bearded and heavily muscled in a way that only comes from manual labor. He had an insatiable desire for knowledge, a ridiculous love of practical jokes and an amazingly tender heart towards children and animals. He loved beer, Hawaiian shirts, jigsaw puzzles and mystery novels. He lived very simply and was generous almost to a fault. He hated to throw anything away if there was any chance that it might be used again in any way. He was also one of the most important people in my life; one of the guideposts by which I defined myself. Without him, I am missing a rudder.

My father had large, square hands. They were always calloused from working in the fields because he frequently eschewed the many pairs of gloves he owned. A normal day in my childhood could find him operating a sawmill, chopping wood, making hay, milking goats or doing any one of a million other farm chores. Most people would have called him a man’s man, tough on the outside. What most people didn’t know was the inside his heart melted for his three little girls and it was not uncommon to see him with his beard or what little hair he had held back by plastic barrettes, braided into many tiny braids or otherwise decked out sparkly little girl accessories. He loved to tease and torment us; he would shake his wet beard over us after a shower or throw his stinky socks at us at the end of the day. One day when a friend was over, he was expounding on the joys of being an adult as he passed around that evening’s dessert–swiss cake rolls or some other Little Debbie snack cakes–and without warning he reached out and BANG! slammed his hand down on the friend’s cake, telling her he could do that because he was an adult, and that was what made being an adult great. He did also swap her mangled cake for his.

My father sang to us a great deal. While he did not sing outside the house and I can’t recall the way it sounded when he sang now, I know he sang a lot. The song I most remember him singing to me was You Are My Sunshine, which has always made me cry. He would wake us up on summer mornings by bellowing “Rise and shine and give God your glory glory”, his rich, round voice refusing to allow us to remain sleeping. He sang songs while we worked, teaching us to use them to work on the same rhythm. Frequently sung songs also included Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side and Stealers Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle With You. He was a terrible dancer, but he did a great deal of that around the house too, doing what we all affectionately called “the white man shuffle.” He loved the song The Safety Dance, and when we played it at my wedding, he made a point of telling me–as he grinned–that he was so glad I’d played “his song.” He loved The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Lou Reed, The Byrds, Flat and Scruggs, Arlo Guthrie and loved rock, old country, bluegrass and jazz in general.

My father was not always the most patient of men. Sometimes we argued and sometimes we yelled. I did inherit my stubborn nature from him, so it’s only natural that we butted heads every now and then. The greatest gift he ever gave me was that I have always known that my father was behind me, proud of me and ready to catch me if I fell. Even as he kept his worries and sadnesses from us, he was free with his love, hugging and telling us he loved us as frequently as he could. A phone call to him could stretch for hours. The last thing he said to me was “I love you” and as I struggle through my life without him, I can think of no better gift he could have given me.

Happy birthday Daddy. I love you more than words can say, and for you, one last time, The Safety Dance.

also posted on catharticink.com

My birthday this year is bittersweet. I’m excited to be turning 30, excited for the start of a new decade of my life and excited because I just plain love birthdays. But it’s a hard day in that it’s the first birthday my dad isn’t here to sing happy birthday to me. When I turned 27, I thought he forgot my birthday. He came home to messages on his answering machine from both of my sisters reminding him to call me so on my 28th and 29th birthdays I got emails from Dad that said the following:

28: (subject line “burpday”)
Happy Birthday . This is to let you know I haven’t forgotten
and to keep my answering machine from overloading with messages from
your siblings to remind me. I will give you a call when I get home
from work around 10 . Love Dad

29: (subject line “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”)
I will give you a call after I get home from work tonight.Have a
Happy Birthday .  Love Dad

My dad had a way of calling on people’s birthdays that involved singing loudly before actually saying hello to the birthday person. I would answer my phone and he would belt out the birthday song and follow it with “HEY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This is Dad.” As though I didn’t know.

While I’m missing my (crazy) father, I’m also thrilled that my mother is here for a week-long visit. We’re partying it up with friends today, I’m entering my 3rd decade on this planet as I hope to go on–with good friends, good food, and a gallon of margaritas.

(cross-posted on Letters to My Father).

Hey Dad,
When the Clash of the Titans remake was released last year, I watched the previews and watched Liam Neeson bellow “release the Kracken” over and over. One day, while riding in the car with D, I paused mid-sentence and burst out “OH! KRAKEN, not CRACKIN’.” You used to say that over and over to us girls when we weren’t moving as quickly as you wanted us to, or when you wanted to motivate us to get started on a job and somehow–although I am familiar with the Kracken as sea creatures–it took me 29 years to realize that you were quoting a movie line. I wish I’d shared that story with you, because I think you would have really enjoyed hearing me try to verbalize what I thought it meant to “unleash the crackin’.” All I can say in my defense is that you didn’t always make sense, and it’s been years since I’ve heard you say it anyway.

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.