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.