Today I got a box full of pictures from my dad's executor. One of them was a blow up I had done for father's day a few years ago. It shows him holding me as he leans over his birthday cake to blow out the candles. I'm six months old and he looks happy. Looking at that I could cry a little, something that I've not been able to so since I've been home.

There is also a little photo book of him and the people he worked with. He has his arm around some folks and he is grinning with all of his teeth. One shows him in a skit where he's dressed as a cowboy. On the back it says "Crazy Horse Craig". He had this picture on a shelf for a zillion years and I asked him about it but he would always joke it away.

And then there are the high school photos of me and my brother that occupied a place of pride on a shelf above his tv in the living room. Dis he wish we had stayed that age and remained the more pliant, less savvy people we were then? And of course my hairdo was terrible.

What was it that he hated so much in himself?
That grin haunts me.

There is another photo of him, one we were looking for but couldn't find for the memorial service, of him as a little boy, looking mischevious and wearing a fedora. And there is the grin.

A whole, big, ole life ended so small. That makes me so sad.

Don't let this be you. Live the love in your heart. Realize that forgiveness is up to you whether the offender apologizes or even acknowledges their wrong. Interact. Enjoy. Relish. Mustard. Tango.

My daddy

My daddy's dead.

I hated him--I didn't hate him, but I abhorred his behavior. He treated my brother, the one I love most in the world, like shit for no discernible reason. He often raged and screamed at me and lied to us and to other people about us. He seemed to hate our mother. In his last months he often said to me, "I have no family."

At his memorial service we met person after person who he helped, people who went to elementary school with him, and were his med students, people who worked with him for many, many years who spoke with me for minutes with tears streaming down their faces. So many doctors who trained under him, fraternity brothers who thought he was the smartest man they knew, warm, kind, considerate.

Strangers would call to ask to "borrow" money and he wouldn't send my brother to college.

And then his good friend got up and said "What he was most proud of was his children." That he was proud that I was trying to stay independent despite my medical problems. That my brother could translate his brilliance and business acumen into a position in a foreign country and thrive. That he had beautiful little granddaughters and a great daughter-in-law (ex) who made sure that we are family.

And here I am weeping my guts out because I loved him like the sun shone out of his ass.