The Waiting

I am my father’s daughter, and it’s one of my most honored distinctions.

It is utterly insane to me that I only knew him for two-thirds of my life. He passed away extremely unexpectedly in July, 2001 when I was nineteen and my brother was fifteen. He had been on a two week trip to the Northern Tier in Canada with my brother and his Boy Scout troop. On the last night before returning home, his heart failed and he was gone.

I’ve lived the last ten years without seeing his face or hearing his voice. Happily, my parents invested in a video camera when my brother was born in 1985 so now we can just watch the videos and remember his voice and the way he walked, but yeah, videos. Meh. Very little consolation there.

I want to articulate my love for him so thoughtfully and poetically, in a…