I watched my dad die from complications from lung cancer five years ago today. A lot of random memories and thoughts about him have popped up this past year. Here are some of them. My dad was overprotective to the point that it was funny. Though I will say I found it more annoying than anything else as a teenager. For example: Every time my sisters and I would be heading out the door to see a movie, he asked us if the parking lot was well lit. I feel like there was at least o

I wish July 27, 2015 was just the day my dad died and not the day I watched my dad die. When my dad died, my first feeling wasn’t grief or sorrow or unbearable sadness but relief because standing for forty minutes around a hospital bed watching somebody gasp themselves to death is horrible and I didn’t want to do it anymore. It still feels like that shouldn’t have been the way that happened. A lot of people had opinions about taking my dad off the ventilator and it was annoyi

My dad is dead today. He’s been dead this whole past week. He might have been dead the week before as well. But not the one before that. He was alive and well two weeks ago. He woke up at 6:30am in his house in Novi, Michigan two weeks ago and got ready for his day. I remember this. I’ll be more clear: I remember not thinking to myself “My dad is dead” two weeks ago. And if I didn’t have that thought, then he wasn’t dead that day. He lives and dies in random spurts and stretc

My dad died a year ago today. He stopped gasping for air and his heart stopped. Or his heart stopped and so he stopped gasping for air. Either way, I’m sure I got the medicine wrong, but those scenarios are what I’ve held close to me as truths for a year now. My dad has been gone a very long time. A year is both fast and quick and long and slow and arduous and too-suddenly-over all at once. This is how the almost eleven months that he spent sick felt, and it is how the year a

The night before the eight-month anniversary of my dad's death, I had the first in what's become a string of somewhat bizarre dreams about him. I haven't decided yet if these dreams are better or worse than never seeing him. I dreamt that I was out in the hot sun on this huge expanse of green lawn. There was a large white tent in the middle of the grass and tables of food and white chairs in long rows stretching on and on and on. Everywhere I looked people were dressed like t

I’ve never liked saying that my dad passed away. I’ve said it before. I’ve said it over and over and over again—or I feel like I have anyways—and every time it comes out of my mouth, something inside me winces. It feels like a lie. He didn’t “pass away.” He died. He did the last thing any of us is ever going to do. He died and that’s the reality of it. But “dead,” and “died,” and “death,” are all harsh words—even their mouthfeel is mildly unpleasant—and people don’t like to h

I don’t ever see him. He doesn’t visit me. I don’t feel his presence. Instead, infrequently, I have dreams that are all about his absence. That are consumed with the reality of his absence. How he isn’t here anymore and everyone in my life is trying desperately to adapt to the hole. Last night, I dreamt that my mother was driving across the country by herself in my childhood minivan because my dad wasn’t there anymore to take the wheel, and she wanted to prove that she co