Hey, Dad. It’s been a minute.
Actually, it’s been five years. Five years ago today, you left us for the afterlife. I’ve had the same line running through my head all day: “Five years. When you say it like that … you wonder where the time went.”
That’s a paraphrase of a quote from one of your favorite movies, “Shawshank Redemption,” which was on TV Sunday morning before I went for a long walk. It hit me when Andy and Red say those lines that five years came and went incredibly fast.
Aug. 5, 2019 was a blur. I’ve written about that day in this space. In some ways, it was the worst day of several of our lives. It was also a relief after watching you struggle so much.
Those are the sad memories. Fortunately, those are few and far between five years later. We still talk about you often, especially at family get-togethers. Dan and I think about you all the time. I’ve taken to the phrase “You big dummy,” though I reserve it for myself in moments where I am a big dummy (there are plenty).
I know you were never one for long conversations, so I’ll move on to the big news: After seven years of researching, writing, editing and planning, my book about Brenda Keller is about to be published. In fact, it goes to print this week. By early September, “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, faith and forgiveness in a small Kansas town,” will be in bookstores and the hands of readers.
The book is already available for pre-order on the websites of numerous stores. You can buy it at bookstores in Washington, California, New York, New Jersey, Kansas and several other states. Of course, it’s also available on my website, a project that prompted me to use “you big dummy” several times.
Needless to say, between family, work and the book coming out, the fall is going to be hectic. Enough so that Dan and I made the decision to skip the craft shows this year. That was not an easy decision. At the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that you would not want me to sacrifice the joy of book signings and events for a couple of shows (nor would you want the quality of our leather goods to suffer, which it would have with less time to devote to the business).
Aside from that, life is much the same. Both of our families are doing well. You would have been a great-grandfather again (she was born late last year), and one of your granddaughters is now married.
What isn’t the same is life without the old man. We miss you every day, but we will always be grateful for the life lessons and dry one-liners, which we still use almost daily.
Love you, Dad.