This will be the last Father’s Day I get with my dad on this earth. I realize in saying that both the blessing and the curse. My heart has been heavy for months and the processing of it all has me questioning how far I’ve really come in healing — like I have a toolbox full of tools but haven’t found the one to do the trick.

I’m reading a book right now that’s written by a Buddhist monk and talks about the middle way. When I reflect further on the tools I have in conjunction with this idea of a middle path, I begin to consider that not everything is meant to be fixed. Maybe the goal isn’t to conquer anything but to just be with everything. The middle way.

This year started with my dad helping coach Sonny’s t-ball team. His symptoms started with his balance — I sent the coach an email suggesting he not invite my dad out on the field, that he’s better off assisting the kids with getting their helmets on and finding their bats. We spent months taking him to appointments, lab draws, virtual visits, networking with friends of friends who may lend us the answers we were searching for. And then we got the answer we were searching for and I immediately missed not knowing — A diagnosis only one in a million receive. No cure. No treatment. Rapidly progressive. Always fatal. And just like that, the impermanence of life showed up on our doorstep.

My dad was a doer, never a talker; his actions have always spoken louder than his words. He’s humble to a fault and wonderfully idiosyncratic — the only man I know to eat yogurt using a writing pen or put tortilla chips in his cargo pants pocket or nap face down halfway in a room and halfway in a hallway making whoever finds him wonder if he’s just been murdered. He’s incredibly honest and as loyal as the day is long. I miss him so much already.

Ordinarily my dad would read this Father’s Day tribute with happy tears in his eyes, beaming with pride; he’d sift through the comments and light up over comments left from both old friends and complete strangers. Even with so much of him gone already, he still lights up in ways that remind me that he’s still in there.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” -Pema Chodron

Dad, I love you.