I was a loser who didn’t seek a real job until I was 25, and didn’t get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I’ve never seen him so proud of what I’ve become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.

He had a heart attack and died two years ago.

As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father’s suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.

I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he’s around.

Love you, dad.

Realizing that my father was a coward killing goat herders from a billion dollar jet, not a hero like I thought growing up.

When I found out he had neglected to tell me that I have an inheritable disease that will suddenly just outright kill me one day, unless I get regular checkups. Other than that there just isn’t that much I know about him, he never told me about himself and we rarely meet.

Who?

I have so many stark lasting memories of my dad, good and bad it’s hard to pick the one with the greatest impact.

Maybe the time I watched him have an allergic reaction to an ssri that ended in 6 cops beating him unconscious and dragging him to jail.

Maybe the time he unprompted pulled $800 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady at the laundry mat who was stressed about paying her rent that month.

Maybe the time my friends and I showed up at 2am with bath salts and he did a little toot with us.

Maybe the time he sat with me in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night playing chess while I cried about being broken up with for the first time.

My mom would always fuss that I’d drip water on the floor after a shower. After one such fussing, my dad took the time to actually give me advice on how to towel off properly, so as not to drip. (LPT: start from the top, work your way down)

Anyways, he was the more patient parent and would try and help you succeed.

One time I fell backwards from the ladder to the treehouse my dad built. I summersaulted backwards like twice as I fell but I was completely fine. But the look of worry and how fast he ran is something I’ll never forget. It made me realize how much he cares.

I flat celebrated my father’s death. The upside was he instilled equality of gender well, and considering the 80s that wasn’t common around middle USA.

Father’s Day is complex for me. Balancing my adult daughter bringing it for me vs memories of mine takes effort.

When he died, we all could finally breathe.

My dad is… complicated, and I could tell a lot of insane stories. But the memory that is haunting me is how he said “we won’t wait when war starts”, in Russian. It made no sense. I overheard it as a part of some conversation with my mother (maybe other grown ups as well) when I was a kid and I asked what he meant and he claimed he didn’t remember saying that. I believe him that he didn’t remember. But it was odd, it’s not something he would say. Neither he, nor my mom, nor their friends are political people talking about war, ever. It was said casually, but no one ever casually talked about war or politics over here. This was 25 years ago. I kept thinking about it for years and years again, trying to grasp what it meant, what it might have meant, and why it stuck with me so much, why I couldn’t get it out of my head, why I couldn’t let it go.

It was also painfully screaming in my head when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022. It’s like it was an eerie foreshadowing but I still don’t know. I have so few memories of my childhood, why did this one stay? Why do I see and hear him say this? What did he mean with “we won’t wait”? Did he mean we won’t wait for the war to start or we won’t wait when the war will have started? Both are possible interpretations in the Russian wording. What are we waiting for? Are we still waiting? What should we be doing?

I keep going back to this one stupid sentence and this memory is ringing in my ears. What does it want to tell me to do? I know I need to do something, I just can’t figure out what.

Coming everyday to sit with me in the hospital for a month; from the ICU all the way to the general ward until he walked out the front door with me.

I always knew my dad loved me but he wasn’t great at expressing it, but it was never more apparent than during that time.

Any good memories of my Dad are overwritten by the child abuse. I would’ve been better off being raised by a single mother. Today is… complicated.

There are few greater antipoles to me and “my whole thing” than my dad, but… He taught me the value of being cautious, and to take time to extensively evaluate pros and cons before I made important decisions. I took that ball and ran with it, and now I am routinely praised by my peers for my ability to foresee potential pitfalls and preemptively negate them, and reflexively I think of my dad who would suggest that it was just common sense.

Of course it’s not just “common sense” – but rather a curious mindset and an intentional thought process – and you instilled that in me, Dad. Thank you.

I came out to him over christmas 2 years ago and that’s the last time he’s spoken to me. His last words to me before he read my letter were “Love you always”