Miss Ya, Dad

Father’s Day is always a tough one for me, having lost my dad six years ago. They say things get easier with time, but I think what they mean is different.

I still think about my dad every day. There’s the cliché of a parent being your best friend, and in this case, it was true. I could always count on him to call once a week to catch up on life, what was going on in the world, and how my writing was going. As a poet himself, that was the main thing we bonded over. He was my biggest fan and harshest critic since age 9, when I started writing things other than school projects. Even at that age, he would talk to me about things like theme, pacing, and the best word choice to successfully convey what I was trying to say. Could you guess he was a high school English teacher? 😊

In fact, it was his class my junior year that sealed my desire to become a writer. He had these projects (you could do either a series of poems, short story, or essay) where we could write about whatever we wanted. I often chose essays, which was good practice for when I wrote columns for my first job out of college as a newspaper reporter. It was from these projects that he helped me develop my technique, voice, and style.

Because anyone who asks me where I get my sense of humor from, I tell them, without hesitation, “my dad.” If he and I were in the same room or sitting next to each other somewhere, you could count on us to be having an inappropriate conversation for the occasion. And I mean, cracking jokes at a funeral level of inappropriate, even though he was old school Catholic. “God must have a wicked sense of humor with everything going on,” he told me once.

That was why I started his eulogy with a blonde joke. They were his favorite and I have no idea how many he told me over my lifetime. I remember when I had the idea, I was trying to figure out a way to introduce it, a way to frame it where people would know why I was telling a blonde joke at my dad’s funeral. But one of my sisters said, “Just start with the joke. That’s what Dad would do.” And she was right. Often times when he called, he would just start telling me a joke he had heard from one of his golfing buddies. So it was the most appropriately inappropriate thing to do.

But my sense of humor isn’t the only thing I inherited from him. Being a teacher’s daughter, I learned how to accept criticism and effectively give it back on someone else’s work. I’m part of two writing critique groups and have enjoyed feedback panels at conferences. I love the give and take of that process with other writers. Some might say I’m obsessed with reviews, as I got many, MANY opinions on my current romcom before I published it. And that’s probably because I was missing the most important one to me—my dad’s.

It was painful having to publish this book without his final reaction. He had only seen the first draft, which was so rough that his immediate response was, “this isn’t a real book.” He told me the various elements he thought needed work, and it was through my groups that I fleshed it out to be so much more than just a fluffy story. But at the same time, knowing he wasn’t going to see the finished product made it much more difficult to publish.

After he died, I stopped writing for about a year. At first, I told myself it was because I was grieving. But as time went on, I knew it was because I was never going to get his thoughts on my writing ever again. Putting together his eulogy was tough enough, but it was also the first thing I had ever written without his feedback. Even now, as I’m getting ready to start my next book project, it’s tough without him here to bounce ideas off of.

At the same time, the thing that got me back to writing was him. I could just hear the disappointment in his voice, saying “This is such a copout. I’m the last person you should use as an excuse to stop writing.” And he’d be right, again.

So even though he’s gone, his lessons and spirit are infused in everything I write. And he would get such a kick out of hearing that.