October 22, 2025

There have been words waiting to be picked, like small bronze leaves on the serviceberry bushes.

Two years ago, it was greydrizzling rain in Wisconsin. The night before, I didn’t sleep much, bed of hospital chairs with a view of the capital, the white dome lit through the night as we listened to the various death rattles move through my father’s body. His body, because his spirit felt gone, but I know it was grateful for how we eased the pain of the body and how my sister covered it with plants when there was no more breath. 

It was a Grace when he passed. I had had a forewarning, and I felt ready, and grounded. There are many gifts he gave to us in the architecture of his leaving. 

And certainly, I cried, and certainly I grieved. But as time goes on, it’s only that I miss him more.

I miss him, especially on these perfect Autumn days where the light is softly golden, and the plants become a rainbow. Not the garish impossible mirage in the sky, but the multicolored, rooted rejoice of death as the earth goes to her rest.  It is our time, my father’s and mine. Both of us born in this month of thin veil.

Though it’s a not a consistent habit of mine, I miss smoking weed with my father. We had real, deep conversations. We were silly. We fought. There was that one wagon wheel dance together on the Jersey boardwalk after he shared his childhood trauma. I still remember the white sculpted concrete blocks and the square windows of that little motel, defiant against the blue sky as we walked past it to the beach, stoned and drunk and happily existing together in the world of each other’s truth and safety. 

I miss his courage, his joie de vivre, his “lifelong learner” approach. I miss bragging that he started going to therapy in his 70s. I miss him playing saxophone, I miss his nut butters, I miss his maple syrup. I miss him putting ice cream in his coffee. 

I miss knowing he loved me, loved me in a way that can’t ever be replaced. This year, as I shattered myself in the community I had leaned deep into, a kamikaze crash and burn, I don’t know what my father would’ve said. But I know he would’ve loved me through it. I know he would have offered me wise words. I expect at this point,  he would’ve sent me a keyboard mail. As was his way.