i will remember you

today is july 29th.

my dad died on july 29th, 2001. every year since that day, i have braced and prayed and hedged for a tearful and vague phone conversation with my mom, and the urge to tell someone, at least one other person, the sentence "my dad died today". it's an anniversary that i need to verbalize to remember.

every july 29th, i write my dad a letter about all the things that happened during this year since the last letter i wrote. i stick the letter in my bible. i re-read all the previous years' letters, and i pray some thankful prayers for my dad and for the things that he taught me. this year, i'm thinking of mom and dad together again at last, and wondering what they are up to. i wonder if they remember dates like this.

it occurred to me today on my way to work that almost none of my closest friends at this point in my life ever had the chance to meet my dad. or really to know much about him. so this blog post will attempt to capture some highlights of my dad. the way i remember him. sort of a facebook-style '25 random things about my dad'...because i have to start somewhere, right?

1. dad wasn't particularly tall. probably only 5'6" or 5'7", and narrow athletic legs. brown mussy hair. brown eyes. impish, here-comes-trouble grin. which, after his strokes, eventually became lopsided, but no less the smirk of someone with an inappropriate joke always tumbling around in his head.

2. one of my earliest memories of my dad was of lying in the sun on the carpet with him and our puppy 'fogo'. this memory may only be the result of a picture we have of us doing that, but i feel like i remember that moment, the warm sun, the smell of a wiggly black lab puppy, the happiness of being curled up with them.

3. my dad was a Jesus freak. which embarassed me to no end as a child and teenager, but now i think it is probably the single most valuable thing i will take from having been his daughter. completely, unflinchingly, unselfconsciously, ridiculously in love with Jesus.

4. he was also totally, embarassingly in love with my mom. and liked to play socially inappropriate grab-ass with her. mostly just to mortify his children, i think.

5. on valentine's day every year when dad was working, he would bring my mom purple roses. he would bring robyn and me each a carnation, and my brother a matchbox car or something similarly masculine. when he couldn't work anymore, he'd ask someone else to get the flowers for mom.

6. he and my mom threw great parties. loud, laughing, lots of food.

7. the first time i ever remember seeing my dad cry, i was maybe 12 or 13. one of his good friends from childhood had lost his job, and the man and his wife both had health problems. dad was so sad for them, and for their stress, that he cried. when i got a little older, i realized that it was likely the sorrow of someone who saw his own family in a similarly precarious spot.

8. dad had a temper and tended towards moody shouting matches when he wasn't feeling well. by the time i had made it to jr. high, i decided i could shout back. not a great decision on my part, but inevitable i think.

9. dad drove race cars in regional races when he was a teenager. he had trophies in his den to prove it.

10. when he was a kid, he had a huge alaskan malemute named Luke.

11. dad had a wicked and wildly raunchy sense of humor. nothing totally gross or racist or untoward, but a silly sexual innuendo could make him laugh until he coughed. his favorite movies were 'blazing saddles', 'paint your wagon', and the dvds we had of johnny carson or old saturday night live. he watched M*A*S*H several times a day.

12. he and my mom liked to play silly practical jokes on their friends from church. their friends still talk about them and laugh about the ridiculousness and creativity.

13. dad loved the wilderness, and spoke about "the west coast" like it was an earthly Eden. he wanted to move out there and "live in the mountains". we got to take vacations there several times as kids, and see my dad marvel with childlike giddiness over the sequoias and redwoods and crashing surf and craggy mountains. he liked to drive like a maniac on the mountain roads and laugh cruelly at our pleas that we were all car sick. laugh in a good naturedly fatherly way, of course.

14. he was a drummer and once in a great while he would bust out some drumming on the kit downstairs. i suspect he played it more often on the rare occasions that we kiddos were all out of the house.

15. he loved lobster, crab, and salmon. when his hands were bothering him and he couldn't crack the shells himself, i got the task of getting all the orangey meat out fo the claws and crab legs. i didn't mind it so much. as long as i could forget that that pile of boney tubing used to be an animal, i was pretty proud of my shell-clearing expertise.

16. he also put italian dressing on EVERYTHING. and when i say everything, i mean french fries, strawberries, raw onions eaten like apples, and other atrocities.

17. we went camping when we were kids, and dad loved to gross us out. i remember him killing a fly on the picnic table with his fork and then eating it off and continuing on with his meal. just for the reaction. how did mom put up with this guy???

18. he tried one time to teach me to drive stick shift. it was a disaster of crying and shouting. we never tried again.

19. even when he and i were going head to head when i was a teenager, i always knew he trusted me, loved me, and was proud of me.

20. he was incredibly proud of my sister's artistic talent. loved to show her off. nate and i got the kudos for our report cards.

21. he was a computer nerd and thought that they were just incredibly cool. he got his degree in computer science back in the day when computers took up an entire room and used paper punch cards with funny little codes on them. he was a total nerd.

22. dad used big words around us, and never talked to us like we were too young to understand him. if i asked him what a word meant, he would say "get the dictionary. let's look it up." and look it up with me. any wonder where i got my word obsession?

23. even though i whined and moaned about it, we had family devotions pretty much every sunday night when i was a kid. there were months or even years where we missed many weeks in a row, but overall i would have to say that he was pretty consistent about making time to read the Bible together.

24. dad didn't have much of a singing voice, but he loved to sing in church. loved the hymns, loved to worship. and would look at mom with an adoring beam of pride and love whenever she sang solos in church.

25. mom says that the moment before dad died he said "Jesus! I love you!" and smiled. she always said that she believed that Jesus came and took him home personally. i believe that too, and for her.

anyway. long rambling post. hope that helps. it helps me to remember.