Elegy

The first year I lived in Korea, I had a dream that my dad had died.  It scared me - I woke panicked in the night, so scared that the worst had happened that I immediately called home.  My dad answered the phone, reassured me that everything was okay, that a dream was just a dream, and told me to go back to sleep.

I wish it was still just a dream.

A week and a half ago, my sister-in-law called as school was finishing for the day.  It took me a second to realize that it was the middle of the night in the US, after which came panic, and finally heartbreak.  My dad was gone.

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about this for the last week.  When my siblings and I were trying to write his obituary, words failed me.  How do you sum up the life of the most influential man in your life?  How can you narrow down all the things he's done with just a few sentences.  It turns out, you can't really understand the impact your parents have on you until you're faced with losing them.  It feels like I never talked much about my dad, but when he got sick last fall, all the things he'd ever done for me hit hard.  He taught me how to gently pet a kitten, after my first cat had babies.  When I was a fifth grader obsessed with the Legend of Zelda, he made me a triforce in his tool shed.  I remember getting sick one night when nobody else was awake, and him holding my hair out of my face while I threw up.  There were so many little memories that I took for granted as they happened, whose weight I finally understood.

When I was in college, he would drive to Kansas City without a moment's hesitation, whether it was because I couldn't hear after falling down stairs or because my car window wouldn't roll up.  I also think this was one of the reasons he was so worried when I first decided to live overseas, but after he saw that he wasn't going to have to fly to Korea to get me out of trouble, I think he was proud of me for the life I chose.

While he was taking me to the ER or after fixing my window, he told stories.  Everyone in the family knew about the job he had driving the bread truck - he talked about it quite a bit - but I got the special Kansas City edition of his "misspent youth" - stories about fights in bars and how he used to live across the street from that radio tower, so he could always find his way home.  When I asked him if he'd ever told these stories to Shaggy, he just laughed.  I'm guessing he wasn't worried about them inspiring his innocent Mormon daughter to try and surpass them.  

My Dad was the second of four brothers, and he had lots of stories about them, too.  In spite of that - or maybe because of it - he never treated me any differently than Shaggy.  We both got to go on motorcycle rides around Kansas City - and own our own little dirt bikes, when we were a little older and living on the farm in Excelsior.  Me being a girl didn't change anything.  I couldn't fish to save my life, but that didn't matter.  I still got to go fishing with him at Roaring River when we went down to the farm, and if I spent all my time at the hatchery feeding the fish instead of catching them, he didn't mind.  We went on float trips, too - in fact, the love I have for nature and any of the skills that might help me to survive if I were suddenly dropped in the wilderness are because of how my dad raised me.

My dad loved animals.  I don't think I can remember a time when we didn't have pets.  When a Himalayan kitten was dumped on their doorstep, he proclaimed that it was his cat.  A few years ago when the black lab he got for Game Boy died, he got the same kind of dog I remember my own grandparents having - a Border Collie he named Joe and proceeded to spoil.  My dad drove that dog all over the countryside, to the point where he couldn't drive his truck without Joe wanting to go for a ride.  He grew up with Dirt Devil and especially Princess, and was the reason they came to call my dad "Grandpa Joe."

I never wanted for a thing, because my Dad worked so hard to provide for us.  Christmas was always magical - waiting to see what would be under the tree.  One year I begged for a piccolo.  I left the one gift that I thought might be my piccolo to open last, and I can only imagine how tickled he was when I fell for his trick - he put some shirts on top of it, so that I was disappoined and then ecstatic when I dug in and found it.  

The Christmas before the pandemic he messaged me before I came home to make sure I brought my camera.  He had this great vision for the next year's Christmas card photo - had even driven more than a hundred miles out of the way to get the most important prop - an honest-to-goodness toboggan long enough for all five of his grandchildren to sit on.  Only, we hadn't got much snow - there was only a bit that hadn't yet melted.  We did the best we could with it, and laughed about it later.

The last year I stayed at home, my dad retired from Union Pacific, where he had worked my whole life.  For some reason, Shaggy and Babysis started talking about a trip to Mexico with their spouses, and this turned into the last family vacation before the grandkids - the last one we all took together.  It was different from the way I'd come to travel, but also familiar.  He was always a fan of driving, taking the long way round and stopping at roadside attractions.

My dad is probably responsible for my love of spicy food.  When Shaggy and I were still the only kids, a Mexican place in Excelsior called El Lazarro was the dinner out of choice, and that became a theme that ran throughout the history of our family.  Even better was the salsa he made himself, using the tomatoes, onions, and peppers he grew in the garden.  It was a challenge for him to get his kids to help out with weeding and picking vegetables, which I think made it even sweeter when the grandkids enjoyed those chores and eagerly helped him out, the last summer that he put in a garden.

When I sat down to try and figure out my taxes again a week or two ago, I remembered how he did that for me the first year I lived overseas.  He researched the forms an expat needed, filled them out, and sent them to me in South Korea to sign.  Here it is twenty years later and I still don't really know what I'm doing.  But he knew.  He never did make it overseas to visit me, but I know he read this blog, because he told me once he was printing my posts to take to my great-uncle JD to read.  When I started looking for photos of my dad so that I could put this post together, I felt like an asshole, because I'd missed so much time with him.  Unlike Shaggy and Babysis, I didn't have a wedding or grandkids, or so many other moments of my life that he was a part of.  Unlike Gameboy, I wasn't here for him through these last few years, watching ball games and taking care of the animals. I know that's going to keep bothering me even as my grief becomes less sharp in the coming weeks and months.  But at the same time, he was always there to pick me up, and made more early morning trips to drop me off at the airport than I can remember.

As I sit here waiting to take one more trip back, I can't help remembering all the friends I knew who lost a parent living overseas.  It hurts even more than I thought it would, this great fear that has finally manifested.  But there's solace, too.  There's this week that was spent remembering him with my family, letting the grief sublimate into something less sharp, to become another memory of him, even if it's the first one marked by his absence.

I love you, Dad, and I'll miss you.