A Start...

It's been 7-months and 7-days since my Dad turned 49, and it's also been 7-months and 15-days since the day I received the call that he had died. I remember waking up to anxiety that day like something in my world had gone wrong and I was just waiting for the moment the universe would reveal it to me. The two words that would change my world forever came at 9:43 AM Central Standard Time from a phone call 5 hours earlier in Hawaii. As you can imagine, my heart pounded out of it's chest before I even answered the phone; 4:43 AM, something had happened to either my Brother or my Dad. In the few moments it took the phone to ring, for me to look at my Mom's picture on the screen, and answer to hear "Dad's gone", I had already turned into a shell of what I was only moments before. I remember thinking, "This is what it's like...this is what it's like for your Dad to be dead. This is what you've thought about countless times before and wondered what your response would be, how you could possibly handle it, how you wouldn't survive it"... I had always thought my Dad would die young...he was a heavy smoker, he drank more in one night than most of us do in a month...but truthfully, I had thought "young" meant early-to-mid-60's. So you can imagine much my surprise, that at 49, a week after he had received the last birthday card of his life, he was dead.

It was a convenient thing he went so soon after his birthday. There wasn't a person close to him who didn't talk to him within that last week of his life. Our last chat was the night before; he had written me on Facebook chat while we were playing Zynga Poker, something we did frequently. He had said, "I miss you. I miss you. I love you. I love you. I miss you and love you. Can I call you?" Something I found extraordinarily odd as he would never ask my permission to call me, nor would he repeat phrases of adoration over and over again. I said "Of course you can call me!" Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like had I not of heard his voice that last time, had I of been too tired and said "I'm going to bed", or simply didn't feel like talking. I thank God that I had that last 20-minutes with him; laughing our asses off at the Bohemian Rhapsody Shreds my boyfriend discovered on YouTube as the last few grains of grains of sand slowly fell to the bottom of his hourglass.

I think he must have known his time on earth was coming to an end. About a month before he died he called me and told me he was proud of me, a sentiment he rarely (if ever) shared before that point, although many times I had tried to make him feel that way. I think most of my adolescence was spent trying to prove something to him or get his attention (note: my music scholarships, my GPA, my singing any and every where I could...just to name a few), it's funny that the one thing that would spark his interest enough to mention was my talent in the kitchen, something that up until a few years ago I could have cared less about. He said, "I just gave you ONE recipe someone had given to me and you took it and ran with it. You made it your own and now you cook so many amazing things. I'm so proud of you. I'm serious! I really, really am!" I wonder if he knew then that those words would change everything about our relationship forever, that those words would melt away years of anger and resentment I harbored desperately attempting to suck those words out of him. Because of those words, I can now say for certain that he wasn't perfect, but he was the perfect Dad for me.

Recently, it has become obvious that as the days and months between his death and today become greater, I am going to need to record the things I remember about him. The little memories and the big ones, a phrase he said or some facial expression that I remembered by seeing myself accidentally repeating it in the mirror, whatever it may be, these are all things I need and want to remember. I am attempting to blog every time something comes to mind and I hope that my family and friends will help me remember as well. Here's to Keeping the Memory Alive: A Tribute to My Dad.