My dad passed away suddenly 12/8/17 and I still haven’t lost it. I have cried a few times and teared up occasionally but I don’t feel like I have really expressed my emotions. My da was this amazing, and loving man. He lived this amazing life that kinda defies logic. He was an aerospace engineer that helped get the international space station into orbit, he raced dwarf cars. He was the fire chief at our volunteer fire department and saved many lives. He survived hodgekins lymphoma, and still fought fires while going through chemo. He was a contractor, an engineer, he worked for space X for a time, he was a safety inspector and helped create standards for buildings to withstand hurricanes. There wasn’t much that my da couldn’t do, although sometimes he was the dumbest smart person I know.

We could talk for hours about anything and he had a gift for taking a complex subject and explaining it in a way that anyone could understand. He taught me that family is what you make it, and that the reason we had no friends was because we don’t have hangy downs on our earlobes. He introduced me to great music that I can’t listen to anymore because we played it at the viewing. Guy Clark wrote the soundtrack to his life, and John prine’s song In Spite of Ourselves will always make me think of my goofy, funny da. I remember sitting on his lap and watching Star Trek past my bedtime.

I hate that my daughter won’t remember him and future kids will never meet him. I hate that I don’t know how to express what I am feeling when I actually let myself feel. I hate that my daddy isn’t here to tell me it will be ok. I just kinda fucking hate this