Gifts from my Father

September is a month of mourning.

For our country it represents 9/11 and a time to look back, remember and be thankful.

For me… it also represents the month I lost my father.

September, 2001 was in fact, the 10 year anniversary of the end of my dad’s valiant battle with Cancer. So now, 10 years from 9/11 it rather unbelievably marks 20 years since that fateful day of loss for my family.

It’s almost impossible to believe. My dad has been gone longer than he was in my life. I was 18 when he died – only weeks after starting my freshman year at college. So confused, depressed and overwhelmed as I started a new phase with this incredible weight on my shoulders. Leaving my mom and my brother and everything I knew. I look back and wonder how I did it? I realize now that my ability to soldier through was one of his many gifts. Gifts that have revealed themselves slowly over the last 20 years.

Recently, in part in memory of that 20 year mark, my mom and I spent some time inTucson,Arizona– a magical, quiet, spiritual place to which I had a surprisingly strong reaction. You see, my mom is at a similar place to where I was that awful September in 1991. She is about to embark upon the next phase in her life. Her Act Three.

But what’s different is that mom is armed! With many of those same gifts from my dad than I had to call upon back in 1991. If she doesn’t know already, I suspect she will soon enough.

So whether it really is Tucson for her or not, our weekend there got me really thinking about my mom, my parents, their life together, the incredible, strong, independent women my mom has become in the absence of my father, and all of the things I am so thankful to have, to have had, and to which I have to look forward. Many are gifts and lessons from both my parents – but a solid few are related directly to my father.

So… I made a list – in no particular order – to say “thanks dad” for a few of his gifts…such as:

• An appreciation for architecture
• The simplicity of the perfect necklace
• The will to keep looking till I find it
• The love…no, passion… for a great bargain
• Wit
• Making it OK to leave the knife in the brownies
• The satisfaction of dogged hard work
• Naughty humor
• The non-traditional
• New York City
• The ability for a dog to melt my heart
• Bagels and lox
• Not being afraid to get my hands dirty
• A passion for travel
• Diet Dr Browns Cream Soda
• A good eye
• The love of the process as much as the final product
• “Need” not necessarily being part of the equation
• A bullshit meter
• The Mahler 1^st Symphony
• Chutzpah
• All the things in my husband that remind me of you
• The ability to see people for who they are, not what they have or what they represent
• Sarcasm
• My comfort on a construction site
• Maine
• Good mustard
• The memory of your hands
• The closeness of my family
• The incredible women that is my mom….

And above all else, teaching us – all of us – to be survivors. To not “be helpless”.

We can do it ourselves. Make our own rules. Make it happen. Because, after all as you would have said, if they don’t like it, fuck em.

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