The halls of my junior high were louder the day after my father died, full of audible whispers comprising a cacophony of sympathy I was not ready to accept, not ready to hear echoing off lockers I once looked forward to opening daily.
Strangers looked at me with tears in their eyes. Teachers spoke gently, pulled [...]

My father. My father was tall, like me. Dark-haired. Thin. He wore a mustache, well and often, and tanned easily. I loved his hands, always shaking slightly because of medication he took to balance the madness that sometimes danced in his head. I loved his smile, his laugh like bare feet hanging off a dock [...]

I’ve always thought the way life stops for nothing, not really, not ever, is one of the saddest, and yet most beautiful parts of life. Strange, but beautiful.
I remember that after my dad died, I waited for something, for anything, to stop. To just wait a minute, for our sake. But life was bustling, and [...]

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” -Anne Sexton
I remember the way he had to hunch himself over to hug me. Until the day he didn’t have to anymore. I was twelve. I remember that, too: suddenly, unexpectedly, being tall enough to reach him. Tall enough to see [...]

“They are passing, posthaste, the gliding years…The years are passing my dear, and presently no one will know what you and I know.” -Vladmir Nabokov

Dad,
It is eleven years now since the April we lost you to icy river water. Eleven years since [...]

Sometimes I swear I would have saved him.
Swear I could have rescued his breath from the icy depths into which he voluntarily dove, if only he had provided me the opportunity to play Fearless, to play Savior. I was twelve at the time, almost thirteen. I knew how to act older. I was a good [...]

I have days where I wonder if where I am is where I’m supposed to be. Days where it would seem I am out of place and out of sorts. Days that sometimes make me wonder about transitions, make me wonder if we as people must be patient enough to rest in the here and [...]

Dad,
Ten years have passed since you last wrote me anything, but still I can vividly remember the way your handwriting looked on the page. Letters scrawled with conscious effort in all capitals. Your penmanship never reflective of the inner chaos so often present within your heart and mind, the slowly etched lines and curve hardly [...]