A few months after you died, I had this idea to write a children's book for you entitled Dear Dad. In it I planned to write a letter to you about all the things I remembered us doing together throughout my childhood, and I would include pictures of iconic places and things, such as Indian Boundary Park and the tricycle I always turned upside down so I could pretend to make pickle ice cream, which only you would pretend to eat. I miss you, and there are times when I want to scream it from the rooftops, but it seems like the grieving period I'm allotted ran out long ago, and people don't seem to have much tolerance for my continued mourning. Writing a children's book about missing you and cherishing the memories I have with you was not entirely self-serving, though. I imagined how many children there were whose fathers died, disappeared from their lives, were away at war, or were otherwise not present enough in their world, and I wondered if the therapeutic value of writing a letter to you about all the things I remember about you might give comfort to other kids who are pained by memories of an absent father. It shouldn't be so painful. Or it shouldn't be so shameful to be so painful. The book would have ended with a promise to remember you, no matter how many tears it cost me throughout the rest of my life, and my hope was that other children would read it and not feel so alone.

Daryl went with me to many of my childhood haunts where we shot pictures of places that have changed so much, they were barely recognizable. The photos were nice enough for the book, but they weren't the way I remembered them. I couldn't replicate the images from my memories and the book idea became an impossibility. The knowledge that I let go of the goal to make this book weighs heavily on my conscience, but I simply could not produce something devoted to remembering you, with illustrations of places and things you never knew. My dream to honor the childhood you gave me by writing a book for children who miss their own fathers remains a dream. In the meantime, I still have this aching need to write you letters, to share my life with you, to cherish the memories that hit me at the oddest times, and to release some of the thoughts and feelings I still have about you. This might not be my intended format with my intended audience, but it's all I have for now. This is the only way I know of to pay homage to you the way I wanted to.

The end remains the same, Dad. I will always remember you.