Today would be your 69th birthday. I’d normally be calling you and reminding you that 69 years ago you were crying like a newborn baby. Tonight we’re getting together and the only person missing will be you.

I can’t tell if I’m tortured by the memory of lying in bed with you as you were dying or if it’s something I’m holding onto so hard, the last memories with you; our last touch… Me stroking your sunken cheeks, scanning your body for the light that once filled it. Your energy, your spirit, leaving before my eyes.

I miss you so much.

The other day you came to me in a dream. I was at a party and you were talking to Hooper in the distance. Your back was to me but I knew it was you instantly. You turned and I ran into your arms. Even in my unconscious state I was conscious of not wanting to wake up. And even after I woke up, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep to find you again.

I think of that part in Beetlejuice where he’s sitting next to that guy with the really small head and all the dead are waiting in line to figure out the whole life of being dead. I had been waiting for you to come to me in a dream — envisioning you on the other side learning how to connect and send messages to the ones grieving your loss.

A few days later Van said you were in his dream, too. I started to laugh and cry thinking of you making your way down the list; meeting us all in the ways we need, in the ways we’re open to seeing you.

It doesn’t feel like enough and it’s easy to fall into the pity of wanting more but that feeling of waking up after seeing you, feeling you, and loving you was complete. And when everything about your death feels like a loss, I’m happy to hold onto that as a gain.

Tonight, we’ll honor you. We’ll fumble, we’ll laugh, we’ll cry. Grief really is just love with nowhere to go. Happy birthday, dad.

When we got my dad’s diagnosis, which I’ll talk about at a later date and time, I felt incredibly powerless. It’s only natural to go into the mental debate of what’s better: losing someone unexpectedly or being handed a death sentence and watching the person you love disappear little by little albeit rapidly at the same time? It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is the same: they both suck.

I started tending to plants in an almost frantic, feverish way. I brought new plants in but I also rediscovered several plants in the backyard that had been neglected, left to fend for themselves, for years. I found myself tending hard to the deserted plants, cleaning off cobwebs, running spiders out with the hose, replacing cracked pots, and so on and so forth.

I had gone to the Long Beach flea with my girl Cindy a few weeks back and there was this succulent hanging in one of the tents. I asked the owner how much he wanted for the plant and he laughed and said “two thousand dollars”. It wasn’t for sale. Probably because it was so unique and so beautiful. It dawned on me sometime later that I actually had that same plant in my backyard. It was one of the neglected ones and it sat hanging outside my kitchen window dying in front right there in front of me.

Somehow the powerlessness I felt over my dad’s diagnosis transferred over to a fierce urge to save some of these plants, particularly that one I saw at the flea market; the one I knew had so much potential but sat otherwise dying in plain sight right outside my kitchen window.

I cut off some of the dead parts, cleaned off the cobwebs, started watering it again, and gave it a new home outside my bedroom door.

I’ve been watching week after week as the leaves slowly started turning green again. Yesterday this little bundle of pink flowers on it bloomed.

Note to self: What you water will grow.

I left some of the cobwebs on the leaves. It captures the way opposites coexist. The ever present integration of opposites: Old and new. Beauty and pain. Life and death.

The other day Van poked fun at what he has declared to be my plant “addiction”. Hooper was quick to interject: “It’s her healthy coping mechanism”. Feels good when shit you throw their way sticks. They’re getting it, because they’re watching it. And there’s so much beauty in that, too.

Finding you is a choice I choose to make. I see you dad, I see you in everything.

This is a picture of my dad in front of our home with his van and baseball glove (two things he loved). His brother apparently used to call this van the “pig mobile” because it was always trashed. My dad was always messy. It’s interesting looking back because my parents both ran their own physical therapy offices but my dad ran it in such a way that involved papers everywhere, files brought home, piles all over the place while my mom seemingly didn’t have the same amount of work (as an adult, I came to realize that she was simply organized and left her work at her office). Yesterday, on a walk with my mom, she shared how simple my dad really was; how going through some of his stuff she came to realize that he really didn’t keep too much of anything but everything he had was usually out, visible. I like to think of him the same way — he didn’t hide much of anything and what you saw was authentically who he was. Nothing tucked away.

My dad died on Tuesday, just a few hours after I turned 40.

It’s like a pill that’s too big to swallow. It’s like a story I’m telling that isn’t my own; a story I wish I could separate myself from. Words so definitive that don’t at all capture all the feelings those words hold.

I cried in front of a cashier at the store yesterday. It’s like that — it just hits when it hits and it hits unapologetically, without any warning. It begs to be seen and I try to let it.

My dad was honest and loyal and caring. He was also simple; always easy to please and never taking more than what he needed. He was silly and playful and joyful. A man that always let his actions speak for him. Humble as the day is long. Loyal to his family.

I have so much more I want to say but I’m struggling to write about him in the past tense. I’m not there yet.

I’ve never done life without him. I don’t know if I’ll remember to turn off my sprinklers when it rains, to have my dryer vent cleaned out regularly, and to use my gas points to save a few bucks at the pump.

This morning I did my meditation in my sunroom as the sun was coming up and shining through the trees in my backyard. It’s been cloudy lately, remnants of last month’s June gloom lingering into July. But this morning, I positioned myself to be fully covered in the light and when I closed my eyes, I saw the orange of the light I was feeling warming my skin. I felt my dad and I had the realization that it’s not that those of us who have lost a loved one see their loved one in everything, it’s that they can find their loved one in anything. It’s a choice. Just like so much of what I’ve learned already on my healing journey.

Epiphanies, they’re going off like landmines.

I miss you, dad. I miss you so much. I’ll never get over losing you. I’ll also never stop finding you in everything, everywhere.

My birthday will forever bring me back to you. What a gift.

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.