Some Say I’ll Miss You Every Day
Today is my father’s birthday.
Some say,
I miss you every day since you passed away.
But that’s a lie.
Some days I am too busy working,
running from one task to another
thinking about the meeting after the meeting,
the thing still unfinished,
the thing waiting for tomorrow,
and you do not enter my mind at all.
Some days we are at a concert,
listening to musicians celebrated enough that thousands of people have
gathered just to hear them breathe into a microphone,
and I am completely there...
until the baritone begins.
One deep harmony,
one note settling somewhere beneath all the others,
and suddenly I am a little girl again
sitting beside you in a church pew,
looking up because I had never heard a voice so deep and beautiful.
You weren’t a man who went around singing.
In fact, you almost never sang.
Only in church,
which was infrequent at best,
strange, perhaps,
for a man who once entered college
thinking he might spend his life
behind a pulpit.
But when you sang,
your voice seemed to come from someplace below the floorboards,
something ancient,
steady,
certain.
Some say,
You’ll miss him every day.
But that’s not true.
Sometimes we are all together,
Mom,
Benton,
Ashley,
and all the lives and loves
that have grown from that first small circle.
Laughing about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow,
celebrating new careers,
sports victories,
holidays,
ordinary Tuesdays,
carrying on inside the rhythm of a life that somehow learned to continue
without you.
And if I think too long about that,
guilt arrives.
How strange
that the world can lose someone,
and still make reservations for dinner.
How strange
that laughter remembers how to return.
Some say,
You’ll miss him every step of your life.
But that’s a lie too.
Most days I work ten hours,
sometimes more.
I research best practices,
design learning,
sit with educators,
argue about what children need,
meet with people from classrooms
to state offices
to national convenings.
I present.
I question.
I listen.
I push.
I keep going.
And you do not enter my thoughts.
Not once.
Or at least,
I used to believe you didn’t.
But then I see someone command a room
without demanding to own it,
and I remember you.
President of state committees,
educational boards,
trapshooting organizations,
standing before crowds as though leadership meant responsibility
before it ever meant authority.
I watch an educator choose a student over a number on a spreadsheet,
and I remember you.
Students respected you
because you cared more about them than filling classroom quotas.
I watch someone lead a team,
and I remember the college dean,
the counselor,
the professor
who expected excellence
and somehow convinced people
they could reach it.
Someone says something bold enough to make half the room recoil,
and God,
I remember you.
You could make people furious!
Then shake their hand afterward
because disagreement was never permission to abandon respect.
I remember that too.
I remember how you spoke positively
in the darkest moments,
sometimes so relentlessly
that I wanted to scream.
How you remained friendly to my ex
when I wanted the whole world to choose sides,
because you remembered something
I could not yet see:
He was still your grandchildren’s father.
I hated that wisdom then.
I understand more of it now.
And I remember your terrible sense of direction,
getting lost somewhere in the mountains
and refusing to admit we were on the wrong path.
It’s an adventure, you would say,
as though changing the word
could change the road.
Maybe it did.
I remember your hands.
Massively strong,
Yet so gentle.
How they could pull back a slingshot,
to skip rocks across water.
And build cabinetry so precisely
every joint met another
as though the wood itself
had agreed to stay together forever.
I remember sawdust swirling overhead
while you wore that white lab coat,
its pockets deep enough for pencils
and, once in a while,
a lost puppy you couldn’t leave behind.
You had a way of taking
what others might pass by
and turning it
into something worth keeping,
You turned boards
into something almost magical:
Furniture for friends,
Hope chests for family,
Pieces meant to last.
Maybe that was always what you were doing.
Building things meant to last.
You taught kindness that way.
Labor that way.
Love that way.
Give your best,
even when you would rather rest.
Finish what your hands have begun.
Leave something stronger
than what you were given.
When you died,
I placed seven pennies in your shirt pocket.
Seven small copper promises.
And now, when one appears unexpectedly,
I pick it up.
Not because I believe a penny guarantees that everything I pray for will
happen.
I know better now.
A penny is not the promise of an outcome.
It is the reminder
that we tried.
We gave it everything.
One hundred percent,
then another hundred,
then somehow a thousand.
And when the path does not unfold
the way I begged it to,
the penny says:
You walked it anyway.
No regrets.
Maybe that is what belief is.
Not knowing the ending.
Not getting the miracle.
Not receiving proof
that life will cooperate with our plans.
Just walking forward
without demanding that tomorrow
explain itself first.
Your final words came three times:
I believe.
I believe.
I believe.
Sometimes I am angry at those words.
Because what are we supposed to believe
when life does not believe with us?
When prayers remain prayers?
When dreams stay dreams?
When people we love leave
before we are finished loving them?
I don’t know.
But today,
on your birthday,
I finally understand something.
Some say,
I miss you every day.
I don’t.
I do not think about you every day.
Maybe remembering
was never only thinking.
Because when I stand before a room and speak what I believe,
you are there.
When I choose respect,
even when disagreement would be easier,
you are there.
When I work harder than I thought I could,
you are there.
When I make something beautiful
and hope it lasts,
you are there.
When I take the wrong road
and decide to call it an adventure,
you are definitely there.
When I find a penny
and keep walking
even though the path ahead
looks nothing like the one I prayed for,
you are there.
Not always in my thoughts.
But in my hands.
In my work.
In my words.
In the way I love people.
In the way I try.
In the stubborn part of me
that still believes tomorrow
might hold something worth reaching.
So today I’ll eat cake.
I’ll probably cry.
I’ll pick up whatever pennies
the universe leaves in my path.
And I’ll try again
to believe there is more ahead
if we do not give up
when life gets too hard.
Some say I miss you every day.
I don’t.
Some days,
I simply live.
And perhaps that is how I miss you most...
because somewhere along the way,
the things I remember about you
became the way
I learned
to live.
