I Miss My Dad

My Dad was one of the most compassionate people that I’ve known, and compassion doesn’t mean hanging out with people that you don’t like. Compassion is understanding that nobody is wrong on purpose. It’s understanding that everybody is doing their best, making decisions based on infinitely different experiences.

Somebody I love dearly once said about my Dad, “you could steal his wallet, and he’d still like you”. For anyone that’s talked to him even once, it was easy to tell that this quality was something beautiful in him, something most of us don’t have, something that we wanted to protect and is gone now.

He made me feel so loved for almost 30 years. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old the time he bought me a $20 trading card - that I didn’t even ask him for - just because of the way I looked at it in the glass case. One summer when I was a teenager my friends’ parents caught us sneaking out, and they called my house (parents that were listening to this speech as I gave it during the reception following my Dad’s funeral mass last week). My Dad was awake playing guitar of course, as he did every night, and I asked him if he could not tell Mom just this one time, and he didn’t. All of my friends got grounded.

Just in the last few years he answered many of my phone calls in the middle of giving a guitar lesson. I could tell when he was busy because he’d answer with “hey Reed” versus - “Reedster, Reedman, Reedarola, Reedarino, Reeeeeed”. Once in recent past he answered and said, “Reed hey I’m playing a gig right now - can I call you back?” I said, “of course, Dad”.

If he called me back right now, I’d say “Dad-man, Dadster, Dadarino, Dadarola, Daaaaad - I love the half of me that’s you, and my life is so good. Thank you for everything. I miss you, and I love you as big as the sky.”