Jerry Coyle

Tomorrow is the day my Dad died. I think about him often on this day.

What his full grey hair would look like.

The kind of Pap he’d be.

What state he’d be living in.

I could see him in the mountains. Maybe?

I always loved the first picture below of him helping fill sandbags post the flood recovery.

Isn’t it odd that he and I have both been through natural disasters?

Both helpers?

Actually I’m the sixth generation of my family that has experienced flooding.

I suppose it’s a right of passage.

His hair was so thick. I don’t remember touching it. But I remember seeing it.

His hands were small.

His laugh was distinct. Jolly but soft.

My mom says everytime I laugh she hears my dad.

She says my mannerisms are just like his too.

I was 9 when he died and the more I grow older the more I forget about him.

So I tend to write it down. Like this.

The last time I saw him alive he was in the hospital. I didn’t always understand everything going on. Baseball cards and basketball consumed my life.

I think now it’s because my Mom was trying to protect us. He was slow to move. Spoke little.

I remember the day he died. I ran into the house from playing basketball all day. My face beat red.

I walked through the door and my Mom was talking on most likely the first cordless phone ever invented because it looked like the size of a brick.

My mom’s voice on the phone directed me to her as I passed through the playroom. In that minute I looked up at my Mom and she was crying.

The kids in the neighborhood call my Mom Terry the Tiger. My mom did not cry. Ever. She yelled. She swore. She gritt her teeth. Those emotions I know. But not tears.

I knew then it was my Dad. Her first love. The father to her two kids. The high school love she chased for years. He was gone.

The next time I saw him was at the funeral home.

When I arrived I didn’t believe that the body laying in front of me was my Dad.

It didn’t look like him.

His face sunkin in.

His hair scarce.

His skin pale.

I grabbed his hand. It was cold.

Surely my Dad would show up soon.

But he didn’t.

So many people walked past me and hugged me.

They kept saying the same thing over and over “Your Dad loved you so much”.

I wish I could remember what that looked like.

Because there is no evidence of it.

A lot of promises unkept. Abandonment. And selfishness.

He was doing the best he could I suppose.

I wonder if he would have changed?

He was the starter of so many things:

A taxi business

A pool hall

A pizza shop. I still have the pizza shop sign hanging in my bedroom.

I guess that spirit of beginning left his body and landed on mine.

His pizza was my favorite. It wasn’t anything special. It was just his. And when you are 9 years old “his” was enough.

Miss you Dad, doing the best I can given a shitty deck of cards.

I’m actually pretty certain that when I transition I’ll look more like my Dad.