Dear Dad,

Crazy how it’s been a decade already.

FYI: Everyone STILL hates cancer.

I don’t talk about you much – not even to Mom.

But damn, I sure think about you – and smile a lot. For me, it’s more therapeutic to think to myself than discuss. #emotionalselfwisdom Crap. You probably don’t understand what that number sign is meant to be or why those words are all crammed together – and neither does Mom, who will end up reading this. It’s OK. Let’s just say a lot of things have developed in the last 10 years.

Things are going well. I am working on goals. Every day is a step closer toward my ultimate goal. Mom is doing well. She has worked her butt off since you past away in order to help me out throughout high school and college, and to this day, she is still doing it! It’s going to be hard to out-Mom her (I should say out-Dad her) one day, but hopefully I will be able to do that.

Back to that smiling thing. You provided me with lifelong memories, Dad. And I’m about to hash them out. From 25 to 1, although the top five could all be number one. Every single one of these memories/moments/things made you unique, and that’s awesome. I love you. I miss you. Now let’s smile!

25) You labeled every single Polaroid photograph you took. That Polaroid camera went through hell. You took that thing everywhere, and when you got behind, you would sit down at the dining room table and write, in pen, the date and an explanation of what the photograph showed. We still have all those stored somewhere – there has to be thousands if not 10,000.

24) You had some wacky mathematical system you wrote out for the Powerball; tons of paper with numbers on it; no one could ever figure it out.

23) You never went into the store with Mom. Hilarious. There was no fun in grocery stores or Wal-Mart unless it was something you needed. We would always play the claw machines though. You won way more than me.

22) You caught the fish; Mom cleaned the fish. We ate the fish. In other words, Mom did the dirty work; we had it easy.

21) You named your/our St. Bernard “Yogi” and there are too many memories to list within this list with that dog. Whether it was going to Dairy Queen to get him a cup of vanilla ice cream to eat or taking random trips to Go Mart to get gas and beer just so you could load Yogi up into the truck and go for a ride.

20) Crushing beer and soda cans in your garage so I had spending money for the beach. You barley paid me for all the grass I raked so this was my best income. You taught me how to crush’em, bagg’em and sell’em. (We always tried to make sure the price was 40 cents or higher per pound.)

19) You called the basketball game  “Around The World” “Round Town.” You were deadly from the right wing. That was your shot. Thing is, you were not into that many sports but you always found time to shoot hoops with me, throw baseball and football with me. I mean, I am sitting here writing this first draft at 3 a.m. and wish I could do that tomorrow with you.

18) You made me stop shooting basketball to hold the flashlight for you. Driving truck, you traveled a lot for work and spent three days away from home at times, so when you were home during the weekends, being a mechanic was your passion. And I was basically your designated flashlight holder. I tried to learn things, but in all honesty, I don’t remember much. You were a pro. You had every tool a man could own.

17) Speaking of those tools. Well, nevermind. That’s too good of a memory to put at number 17. That’s at least top 15. But for No. 17 we will stick with the mechanic side of things. You would read all kinds of random mechanic books – the kind that are meant to literally fix things. Like, 500 page manuals.

16) You and I would go Christmas shopping for Mom. That was fine. But the time and effort you put into wrapping gifts was priceless. You were a horrible wrapper … unless you took a half hour to wrap a package, which you did … for every … … … single … … … one! I helped with the tape. You were not going to put any of Mom’s gifts under the tree unless they met your standards of wrapping. No one could tell you were a bad wrapper, but what went on behind closed doors was several minutes of folding paper juuuust right.

15) You consumed enormous oven baked Idaho potatoes Mom made you. Standard meal: always had a potato; most of the time a gigantic glass of milk at the end.

14) You allowed me to go into grandpa’s woodshed and listen to you guys talk about things. I forget what these things are. But still, I felt privileged to be in there when he was making all kinds of neat/beautiful/magnificent things out of wood.

13) You barely ever dipped your head under water. It didn’t matter if we were at the beach or in our own kids pool at home. Head above water – if not all the time, most of the time. I’m pretty sure you didn’t like it.

12) You allowed me to do the stick shift in your truck. You would tell me, over, down, up, up or some kind of other command. Your tuck stalled sometimes because I didn’t do it quick enough or the right way. I never learned how to drive a stick but that was always fun.

11) You loved watching NASCAR. It’s the one sport you followed. Besides buying all the big-time boxing pay per views, NASCAR was your sport. Rusty Wallace was your driver. You filled an entire curio cabinet with Rusty Wallace memorabilia. You went to races. One of the single wildest days ever: the last trip we ever took as a family to Myrtle Beach. We spent what had to have been 12 or more hours driving around North Carolina going through all of the NASCAR shops. So yeah, it took us two days to get to South Carolina, as usual.

10) We cleaned tools together. Or sometimes, I did it all by myself. Dry red rag, usually. All the dirt and oil came off those wrenches and screwdrivers and all the other weird tools I had no clue what they were for. You had specific hands cleaner that would eat everything away afterward. We would do this late at night and it felt cool to be up late as a kid on weekends.

9) You got pretty mad when I hid (or maybe I threw it in the trash) your Copenhagen. It was my way of saying, ‘Stop doing it!’

8) Teaching you the Internet. Remember the beginning of this thing? I said a lot has changed. If you were here today, I think you could actually learn the Internet. Back in those AOL dial up days, it was a struggle. You had four pages of notes on just how to turn the computer on and get on to the Internet. Let alone searching for things you wanted to learn or figure out. Today, you click one button, go to Google and type whatever you want, then click away at the 19 million links it gives you. I don’t think Mom or I could ever teach you how to use that Compaq computer we had. Half the time, all you wanted to do was print something.

7) Squirrel hunting. Useless, just useless. You knew I could not shut up for five minutes as a child – and I still cannot today. Why in the world did you think you could take me into the woods where there is nothing but dirt, twigs, leaves and grass and me not talk the entire time? Never did kill anything. Amusing to look back at those two or three times we tried together.

6) Beating you on every single video game I had. I must have tried to teach you how to play NFL BLITZ on my Nintendo 64 for five years. You stunk. But laughs were shared.

5) Throwing electronic darts in the garage. We made championship belts out of large yellow poster board. The biggest belt – the championship belt – was designated to the game “1,001 Down.”  Another belt (I forget what we named it, perhaps light weight?) was for whoever could score 1,000 first. And the other may have been for a shorter game – like “401 Down” or something. Either way, we both cheated at times. We both  took the darts out of the board and accidentally made it go off, giving extra points to that person. So we had to start over, press the right amount of buttons to get it back down (or up) to the exact points we had scored and continue the game. Those belts got destroyed from all of the staples they took. When you won, you stapled them up in the garage. When I won, I think I just hid them.

4) Buying hundreds of dollars of illegal fireworks at the beach. Every year, we went to the beach the second or third week of July, came back, and had a late 4^th of July celebration that was a banger at grandma and grandpa’s flight field. It thrilled me when you let me set them off. What a blast! Literally.

3) We built a freaking homemade go-kart – from scratch! I can only recollect some of the process but it took us all fall, winter and spring to build that thing. And once it was built, I took that go-kart over to grandpa’s flight field where we flew planes and made my own go-kart track. You made flags – green, checkered, black and yellow – out of nicely sawed off wood and velvet cloth. You would wave them and I always felt like I was racing somebody. I flipped it several times. When you allowed me to have no restrictions and let the gas pedal unlock after I got used to driving 15 or 20 miles per hour, that’s when it got dangerous. I probably flipped 100 times. Man, that was fun.

2) Myrtle Beach. No, not just all the trips we took down to South Carolina. Those were a blast and probably deserve to be in the top 25 too. But here, I am talking about Myrtle Beach and steel-toed boots. You only went into the ocean with goofy water shoes. And when you were not wearing those, you wore steel-toed boots. There are so many things I felt embarrassed about as an immature kid and this had to be number one. We would be passing football at two o’ clock during the day, it would be 91 degrees and you wore steel-toed boots and blue jeans on the beach. One of kind, one of kind.

1) We were different. In the 13 years and ten months I had you as a father, I didn’t realize how much I had. Now that my brain is close to fully developed, I understand what these moments mean. We had a unique Dad-son relationship. For the most part, we were opposites. Sure, you liked sports but you were not much into them. But you made it to my Little League games when you could, you threw baseball, football and shot basketball with me when there was time. But you were more into self-sufficient activities – like gardening, mechanics, and building/fixing things. When you were not on the road driving your blue and silver Overnite truck, you were home, outside mostly, working on something. I can barely remember you in front of a computer or television. And that’s why I thank you every day. Being an only child has made me imaginative, creative, exploratory and motivated. Cancer may have taken you away from this planet, but these memories will never go away until I am gone from this planet. That’s why sometimes I don’t get why people don’t take a step back and realize what they have. We say we learn from people dying. But do we really? Do people actually think? Because if they did, they would realize, it’s not about the new shirt you just bought or the new jewelry that’s on your neck, wrists or hands or the money you spent (even though you really don’t have it) on a manicure, pedicure or some online purchase.

No. Life and death isn’t about those things. It’s about creating memories – those special moments that, when you are lying on your deathbed, you are talking about while smiling.

And Dad, I had a whole lot of memories with you that will make me smile for a long time. Thank you. I love you. I miss you. We all thank, love and miss you!