(Update-Video)"DDD- Dead Dad Day: Worst One Yet. Best To Be Honest About it. The day,like he, was never what I'd expect."

..Second piece from Introduction for a Series Called "The DDD- The Dead Dad Day. The DayDadDied. The Triple-D."



Today is the day he died. This year is the year he would have been sixty-nine. I’m calling it the year of “rebalance” like the Ying andYang. This is the year my marriage ended and my pride, ego and 
integrity all dropped faster than a windsurf sail let go in head wind.  

This is the year in my life that my passion,his hope for me, was realized. This is the year I forgave and rebuilt a deeply honest and respectful relationship with the mother I haven’t had since I was nine. This is the year I feel more alone and more self-aware and less accepted by the entire world, my peers and loved ones than I ever have.

This is the year I feel his absence bigger than the actual day he died. I let a part of me die that year, the authentic, and believing and Full of verve for life young woman. 

That is a far less painful thing to recognize than right here. At thirty-seven, waking back up and seeing all the time I’ve lost and let pass by in a sleepwalk. I’m forced to live out the ramifications of my mistakes publicly and without any excuses. I don’t allow them. Not for you, anyone, or me.

You always told me to learn from your mistakes and I failed. I made my own. I made plenty and I hurt people. I let them down and lied and lost parts of myself and you, and friends, and comforts that I can’t even reconcile yet.

The slow leak in some of these aspects of life is so faint but steady that I can’t quite find their source and plug it. I am trying. Every day, I try. I give thanks for all my blessings. I pray for help, and I look to you and your mother for guidance. I sit in gratitude and meditation with all my deepest remorse trying to surrender in trust of all of this. 

I had planned to write all the details from that Saturday. I did do that. It just came out and it wasn’t cathartic at all.  It was descriptive, It captured the play by play and palpable kind of feeling that lift and beat on the screen. The very kind you liked because you said: “You’re words make people FEEL them. No choice in it, they ( the words) demand it!”   It didn’t ease any pain; it didn’t process the complexities either.

It was 5009 words, 15 pages single-spaced. Well written, and my core style. Still, I felt empty and not consoled. That never happens. I may not admit it too often, but I know when I’ve written well. I did with that piece.  (and a few others you’ll never read) and I'm sure it will be used somewhere at some future point. Nothing I write, no matter how pretty or articulate or fine point I put on a feeling, it doesn’t bring you back.

I can’t call you even though I know that I am better talking to you because I hold my tears, I toughen up because I know too much about your plights.

I can’t hug you while you try to slap me on the back as if a soccer club teammate, and then laugh at you as you smile and smirking because you do it now, only to get my goad.

I can’t rack my brain for something new to shock you.

I can’t watch from twenty feet away while you teach my kids the latest and coolest software or wax on about the privacy issues with Google, and how you probably are developing some new app that can archive memories and photos in some way noone has thought of . You’d have taken programming classes and enjoyed the geeks and nerdy coolness that is hip now.

I can’t call or email you in a panic on days like today when everything feels out of  my control, and not one person but my sister has called to see if I’m ok. I’d tell you I need you here, and in more time than I’d be patient for, you’d pull in to my driveway in some Toyota, Mercedes or electric vehicle and casually float in as if all was fine. Hiding your concern for your baby girl and her broken life.

My five year old drew a picture about him:
"He loves swimeeninyg" and music and flowers.

I can’t hear you yell in that scratchy high-pitched voice: “Yabba Dabba Dooooooo…..? Wherrrrreeee  Areeee Yoouuuuuuuu?"  to your grandkids like you did to me and sissy. I’d cry hearing them squeal in glee and playful loving attention.

I can’t compete with you in stocks, or inspirational knowledge and quotes. I bet we’d have finished that book you wanted us to write.

I can’t make fun of your clothes, or your grey hair or chubby cheeks to my kids and watch them adore you and your antics.

I can’t make you accountable for your huge and flagrant mistakes and misgivings of my childhood playfully like I do to mom. You’d hate that, but wouldn’t argue back.

I can’t go on vacations where we could enjoy Maui sunsets as adults, parents, and father and daughter.

I can’t ask your advice and then immediately argue against it like I so infamously did every single time. 

I can’t help YOU. Take care of YOU. Offer the nurturing I so shockingly have realized I am really good at.

I can’t say "Goodbye" or "Thank you" to the biggest part of my life yet. The man I've loved the most and perhaps...ever will. 

I can’t handle that I still have so much to say to you and to learn and can finally be selfless enough to truly listen and hear your truths about your life lived.

So that’s hard. So much of me is lost somewhere in the spaces and energies between where you went and where I was when you left. I’m pulling down strings and pieces haphazardly in my broken openness. I am grateful for that.

My DDD Mandala, created 5.18.15

I can see  that everything I am today, and everything as it is has put me right here, right now writing this to you and that’s where I am supposed to be.

I can see how much love I have. I can feel how much love changes things, gentle, kind, forgiving, owning of ones errors to create something better, more giving and beautiful is the gift all this gave me.

I can see you in my kids, all of them. I can warm my heart in a moment just by listing off how blessed they have made me. The lessons they’ve taught me are in some way a small magical gift or nudge from you, I know that.

I can see that all of us lose. We lose and get left behind by someone, in some way.


But, we all can gain a piece of ourselves by choosing to grow in grace instead of fall victim to vengeance and pity. 

I can see now, far later than I wished, that you and I were so similar- too similar. Our explosions, battles and ultimately beautiful friendship was born of the silent recognition of ourselves in each other. We pushed, we pulled and we tested to force the discomfort that leads to betterment. 

That was love, even if no one else defines it that way. I speakyour language of fear, guilt and pain now. I see you, I feel it. I’d cleanse you of all of it, and take it on myself if it would let your heart make it one more day, week, decade. I would take it all from you…

This burden, this strange gift you passed on, is testing me to my very last soul searching self  and fiber of being, but I trust it. I trust you; and all that had to happen to set into spin the amazing things I have in my life now.  

All the memories you kept, gave, created and recorded. They are the priceless eternal love you gave to us. I played your voice to your grandchildren last night. They giggled. They listened.

I showed them your countless 8MM videos and all your close-ups on stranger women’s butts did NOT go unnoticed, nor did the incredible scene of us swinging in the back yard on Tarut lane. 

You always told me that I came from “A sparkle in your eye, and a glimmer in your heart.” I never really gave it much meaning.

Nor did I see your “Lulu….Do you know how much I love you? Do you love me? Do you really, really, really, really, really, really, really…etc. This would go on until my laughter would stop, and annoyance would set in…. and then you’d take it past that threshold!

I understand. I do the same to my kids. 

But I say the following to myself now, and all the times I miss you. I put them here so I can read that I mean it all perhaps the universe can pick the words and sentiments and get them to you:

I really really really really really really really ...etc. (x)infinity love you…Still.

I hold you as the sparkle in my eye. 

From this year onward, instead of the gaping hole that froze my will and gumption to live fully for thirteen years, I've replaced it...

With the glimmer of YOU and your often overlooked playful "joie de vive", love for life, all walks of people and all things. 

Bye for now....Not forever.