Dear Dad,

Dear Dad,

Oh you left a mess.  You knew that, didn't you...that it was a mess.  And yet, in the mess I'm finding myself so many memories!  I'm scanning pictures of our life together and there are so many questions I want to ask you.  Who is that woman we are with?  Where are we flying those kites?  Buck naked, Dad?  Really?  Did we need a picture of that?  Oh, and what is with the fish and the chainsaw?  No, seriously Dad...what is with the fish and the chainsaw?

I had to move your memorial service--Moritomo simply couldn't hold all the people coming.  You touched so many lives.  Mark is coming from California.  Heather and her mom are coming, but you know they would never miss this.  You were so important to them.  I asked for 30 seconds of audio for your slide show and, true to form, Heather sent 30 seconds and Mark sent 7 minutes.  So many people, Dad, so many people.

I'm feeling a lot of pressure to Get This Right.  I have once chance, Dad, one chance to say goodbye to you.  One chance to help all these people say goodbye.  One chance to share everything you were with the world.  I'm not sure I'm doing a good enough job.  I'm working hard on this video, but as I add audio, the slideshow part gets altered and then I add a picture and then the whole thing is off.  Technical problems, really, but I just want it to be right.  So I keep working.  And the food...what do you want me to order for food?  I'll definitely get sushi, but what else?  And how much will we need?  I guess I just have to do the best I can.

These are the things I lie awake thinking about at night.  And know what else I'm thinking about?  How scared I am for all of this to be over.  For the past 6 weeks, your life and death has been my whole world.  This week is going to be awesome--to reconnect with Mark and Mark, to hear all the stories (many I've heard before!), to sit at your house and cry with Heather.  It is going to be amazing.  And then?  And then it will be over.  I'll come back here with my family, Chris will finish the business of your estate, we'll sell your beloved house...but there will be no more.  Then what?  Do you really expect me to live the rest of my life without you?  This is the part that scares me.  What do I do next week?  And the week after?  All the work I have done on the slide show has put me right back into the past--you are so alive and so present in all those pictures.  When the last slide goes up at your service, when the last note rings out, when the last person wipes their eyes and heads for the door...does that mean you are really gone?  I'm so afraid of what I'll feel after that and I'm terrified of the expectations next week.

But that is all part of your lesson, isn't it?  Like Heather said so amazingly for the slide show.  Life, in all its precarious little twits and turns, is meant to be lived forward.  So forward we will go--savoring every bit of this week. 

And I'll try to find out what the deal was with the fish and the chainsaw.  Because I really want to know.

Love,
Your Daughter