…the most amazing dad a girl could ask for was born. As any of you who read this blog probably know, my dad died unexpectedly a little over two years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks figuring out what I could do today to honor the day of his birth. I never really felt like I came up with the right thing…the closest I came was thinking about making a fancy dinner, but then I couldn’t find just the right thing to make. So, now I’m doing this- writing a little about my dad and how much I miss him and love him.
I think it’s safe to say that I still consciously miss my dad every day. It continues to be insanely bizarre to me that I can’t pick up the phone and talk to him, that he’s not there for our family’s Christmas gathering, that he’s…gone. As much as I’ve struggled in my relationship with God over the past 2+ years since my dad died, I have to say I’ve also never been happier to be a Christian, to believe with my whole heart I’ll see my dad again. I’m not sure how I would have made it through this far without having that to hang onto.
It feels insufficient to try to talk about my dad, whether it be through writings like this (and I’m admittedly not a great writer when it comes to this kind of stuff) or when I’m talking about him with friends or family- and especially with people who never knew him. He was just too big of a personality, too kind, too generous, too quirky to ever be able to convey that in words without having experienced him. I think sometimes about how I’ll try to tell my children about him; I so envy my siblings that their kids were able to know my dad.
I think in the same way I find it hard to talk about my dad, it’s hard to figure out ways to pay tribute to him. There’s no way there’s a one-off thing I could have done today that would have felt like enough. But when I think about my dad and who he was and the kind of dad he was, I realized I strive every day to pay tribute to him. I often think of what I do in the context of whether it would make him (and my mom) proud. I think my dad would be (and was) happy with who I (and my siblings) have become. What I can, and want, to do is to continue to live my life in a way that would make my dad proud of how his youngest daughter turned out.
One thing I did do today was make a donation to the Iowa Donor Network in memory of my dad. My dad always joked that he had so many wonky things that happened to his body (a broken collarbone from his basketball days that never healed right, etc.) that he was going to donate his body to science to stump the medical students. When he died, my mom made the amazing and perfect decision to have him be a donor, and the Iowa Donor Network was an amazing support to her in the days and weeks and months after my dad’s death. If you are not registered as an organ donor in your state, please consider doing so.
So Dad, I raise this drink (Shiner Bock- I get the beer side from my dad, the wine from my mom), to you…the most amazing dad, an incredible person, and someone I continue to love with my whole being. I miss you.
