Like many of us, I couldn’t wait to finally turn 21. What an exciting feeling to finally have that drivers license flip from vertical to horizontal by the stroke of midnight. Being that I’m a January baby, it’s unpredictable when the snow will throw a wrench in your plans. Unfortunately, my 21st birthday was just that … my college courses were cancelled for the day and I was left bummed out thinking I would have nothing to do on my big day.

My dad worked nights so that morning he suggested we get ourselves ready and drive to the DMV for my new license. Driving to the DMV ever so slowly, we got there with no line in sight, a true dream. We got iced coffees right after and sat in the car watching the snow fall with my brand new license in hand. My dad put in all his effort just to make his little girl’s snowy 21st birthday special.

I truly wish the tragedies of over a million Covid- 19 deaths in our country will motivate us to be more prepared for future Pandemics. We must not look away from all our failures but learn from them so we can do better. The deaths, sufferings and pain must not be forgotten. We owe it to all the people, my brother being one of so many who lost their lives, to demand accountability and more responsible leadership. We need to be more prepared by electing officials who prioritize public health by securing funding, enacting critical legislation and carrying out international cooperation. I am concerned that our current federal leadership will not keep us safe. Otherwise we have only our state and local governments to protect us from a likely national or global pandemic.

Five.

Five years since I held you through what will be one of the single most heart shattering moments of my life. Carrying you to the very gates of heaven alongside Alec and Brad.

Courage for this impossible morning which could only have come from being your daughter, knowing what pain and grief you carried in your own life, to endure such pain because I knew we both wanted you to stay. You were nowhere near finished with your life on earth. You expected and deserved more. We all needed you so much longer.

In the canyons of your absence, I am aware of the entirety of your essence. Your steadiness and excitement, your tuned in emotional ability to see how others’ hearts were arranged, and what hopes percolated inside of them. Your gaze missed nothing. You would pause and ask follow up questions when you felt someone needed more, needed to be seen, had something further inside for discussion or consideration. Dismissiveness was not a part of your genetic makeup.

One of the most enduring parts of your life is EFFORT. Effort. Care. Energy. Time. Whimsicality. Paying attention to the details which light up others’ hearts, and finding a way to include those things. Perhaps the seeds for this kind of care were planted when you were a “small boy” as you would say – moments your parents and your grandparents poured into you. You could remember making cookies, working on science kits, having long conversations with your family as the only child and light of their lives – picturing you this way as “Stevie” (you have a namesake Stevie now, Spencer and Marissa’s beautiful son) utterly warms and overflows my heart. And when I see gleams of you in Luka I wonder if I am being treated to a heavenly visit from you right then. The exquisite arc of a storyline: you as the grandfather you loved so much with Brayden, Makayla, Annabelle, Amelia, and Luka. You dove in with board games, books, puzzles, all kinds of wheeled toys, puppet shows, and numerous concerts with a plastic drum set and a dog shaped guitar.

Perhaps much of the detail noticing was finely honed by your painstaking work in patent law – where you shared that even the most minute shards of information signified the discerning part of the job. Or maybe more rooted in commercial prowess – you juggled understanding the overarching goals of large corporate projects and tasks meshed alongside the lower stakes but still significant challenges, routines, preferences which must first be untangled to proceed.

You were not afraid of mistakes. I can see you at the piano, playing deftly, occasionally a single key off, then a beat where you closed your eyes and silently resolved what the fix would be, and put fingers back to keys to move forward, missteps a part of the bigger story. You let us know in our schooling, our sports, our careers, our relationships, our choices, our pursuits as we grew: mistakes are natural, expected, and a sign of learning and adapting. I was not afraid to fail, because your candor was authentic and true and it arrived as support and encouragement. Some of our deepest conversations in the years between Mom’s death-Amelia’s birth-your death involved reviewing major relationships and decisions, and considering how we handled them, and if different paths would have been better or produced a different end result. This ability to see the wholeness of a situation and not wear blinders of confirmation bias has guided me forward every day of my life since.

When you did not know enough about something, you ensured you would learn more. You read voraciously and researched thoroughly – you knew data was key to decision making, and you didn’t shy away from taking the time to become informed before arriving at a conclusion. You were the living example of being able to change your mind on a topic with changing information and facts. You sent thoughtful articles and asked questions, and so many of our conversations around my kitchen table made me think as we wondered and learned together.

The higher standard to which you held yourself is what gave me a sense of safety in everything we shared. How you piloted. How you listened without judgement and helped formulate solutions. One could only hope to be so lucky as the ones who were given Steve Wright’s handwritten paragraphs of ideas and mentorship, suggested newsy bullet points of steps with variable choices and suggested timelines paired with bursts of encouragement scribbled as edits in the margins (“you’re a natural at this!” “the work will be worth it!”). Daddy, you’re the one who suggested career shifts, marriage counseling, real estate considerations, business propositions. I have saved every one of these, because each word you wrote was with a purpose: helping others.

Amelia and Luka saw the loving, silly, comforting, encouraging, steadiest elements of you. You cared for them so generously, and they sensed how dearly you loved them. It provided a bedrock which will serve them for the rest of their entire lives. I saw these things you gave to them (and to us as parents) and even more: I saw your resolve and intent and deep, abiding promise to yourself and to Mom within every interaction you had with your grandchildren.

When I think about the courage it took for us to hold you as you left this earth – a day and a moment I could never have fully accepted even knowing grief and the inevitable earthly end as deeply as I do – I am struck by the likelihood that it took courage for you, too, to let go aware of how badly we needed you and how shattered we would be without you here – and move to Mama’s side, letting go of the grip on an earthside existence where you were so loved, fulfilled, and still so possible.

For many months after your death, I only drove your car; we took that red Lexus everywhere. To Florida and back. To Mississippi to get Trixie and back. It was a comfort to be in the vehicle synonymous with you for the kids, for plenty of our adventures together. I wasn’t able to listen to anything else in the car except your Jan & Dean CD already in the CD player which you loved to play for the kids, and especially for Luka on his tough mornings before preschool. You’d institute a car dance session to surf songs and that always erased his grumpiness as you two bobbed and clapped and sang and grinned. I heard the lyrics to “Ride The Wild Surf” in those weeks after you died and they landed as I processed them and leveled me:

Lined up and waiting for that next big set outside /
Nothing can stop it ’cause you’ve just gotta ride, ride, ride, ride, ride /
The heavies at the pipeline are okay /
But they can’t match the savage surf at Waimea Bay /
It takes a lot of skill and courage unknown /
To catch the last wave and ride it in alone /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Gotta take that one last /
Gotta take that one last ride

The last wave you caught from life to afterlife you had to do completely alone, even with us cradling you earthside, the letting go and trusting in what was next was all yours to endure. You were so brave. You were courageous. You worked so hard to be able to trust yourself, and I am aware you infused that trust and potential in your family. Whatever I have to endure, I can take that ride.

I love and miss you without end, Daddy. I am forever changed and better for our love. Marc is. The kids are. Brad and Kristyna and their kids are. Alec is too. We are shattered but we are brimming over with resolve and the wish to preserve and celebrate and carry forward your legacy. Honoring you today and forever. CAVU, and hold Mama tightly for us.

Five years. That’s how old my grandson was when my dad passed from Covid. January 4, 2021. Five years since my mom’s whole world collapsed around her, since my world … shifted like fault lines before an earthquake. Five years sound like such a short amount of time. It is, but then again, it’s not. For me it feels like yesterday, while simultaneously feeling like a lifetime ago.

In reality, it really was a lifetime ago. My dad’s lifetime. Five years of trying to navigate through life without him. A life without my dad, the one man who had been there through every day I had existed. The one who sat in the hospital waiting room the day I was born, being told there was only a fifty percent chance my mom and I would survive. The one who two months later drove me home, prayers answered. The softball coach, the one who taught me how to play basketball, helped deliver Sunday newspapers, taught me how to drive, who walked me to where my future husband was waiting. The one waiting at the hospital when my daughters were born. The man I compared every man I ever met to, because he was what they were supposed to be like, not some fictional idea from the movies. Real, flawed, honest, faithful, truthful and loyal to a point. Still to this day my mind will tell me – ask Dad – Dad would know – what would Dad think? and then reality hits like a ton of bricks. My lifetime anchor, my rock, is not here. Those days aren’t as frequent as they once were, but they still happen. Yes, I know, we all have to prepare for that, but I think it’s harder to accept when there’s no goodbye … no actual ability to see him there at the funeral home. My brain knows he’s gone but the heart refuses to believe it.

There are days that are just going along like normal and then out of nowhere, a smell, a place, or a memory stops everything. It could be just about anything but then there’s dad. Last fall I had one of those days. It was raining, the rain we’d needed for a while. A routine morning, heading over to sit with the grandkids. I had grabbed a baseball cap on my way out the door to shield my glasses, tossing it into the passenger seat. After arriving at my destination, just as I was going to open the door to get out, it started pouring down rain. I grab my bag and the baseball cap preparing for a quick escape, except as I glance down at the cap to put it on … I stop. There it was. On the inside of the brim, A. Trobe. I sat there, staring at that hat, completely caught off guard. I had forgotten about it. We had given it to Dad when he was in the healthcare facility. They had written his name in it. There was no warning, no word, no thought process to get here. Just that hat with the pretty blue design and Sanibel Island written on it, dropped squarely in my lap. In a flash dad was here, out of nowhere, with me again, unexpected, and overwhelming. These types of experiences show up from time to time. Sometimes they are just a whisper, like a soft wind. Other times it’s like the boom of thunder shaking the house.

The guilt is the most difficult side of dad not being here. I run through everything leading up to his passing. The years before, the things I should or could have done differently. The questions about whether I made the right decisions. There are no right answers. Just doubt.

Then there’s the unanswered questions I should have asked him when he was still able to answer them. The ones that never got asked because life gets too busy, the ones I didn’t think to ask when I was younger, or the ones that seemed too fragile to ask. The questions that needed to be asked, simply because as children we never truly know who our parents are. We only know what we perceive them to be. Rarely do we ever dive deeply into what they believe or feel or think. The reason they do all those things they do. We don’t know what truly makes them … them, or what they never share or keep hidden so far down. The traumas, the turning points, the days that make them decide when and what is enough to be done with someone. All the ones left unanswered, the stories left untold. Secrets never revealed, the heartache, joy, anger, guilt, forgiveness left unspoken. How I wish I could have asked my dad so many questions I never thought to.

“Why did you run away to Florida to play basketball?”, “When did you know mom was the one?”, “How did you find, you?”, “How did you find the strength to hold on when you almost lost both of us?”, “What was your biggest regret?”, Why did you name me Dawn?”, “What were your dreams growing up?”, “Is there anything you would do over?” All the questions that made up dad. All the things he kept to himself.
What I do know is, dad loved us all. He continued to become who he was, always growing, He cared about a lot of things. and he expected us to be ourselves, truthful, no pretense. Always genuinely us. I know our lives are richer for having him in it. We miss and will continue to miss him for as long as our memory holds. His love for his family, will live on as each generation passes it along. He will always be my Dad and I will love him forever and a day.

January 1, 2026: another start to a new year, another year that I continue to bring forward the memories of all those New Year’s Eves we shared. Our plans for the new year that we were going to do together are no longer. Covid, you cruel thief.