My world has grown dimmer and less funny. 

My dad passed away last week, on Friday, June 26th.

Throughout his hospital stay, my dad continued being himself. When asked by a doctor how he was feeling, my dad — who was hooked up to all sorts of monitors and had IVs in his arms — said, “I’ve been better.”

Another time he complained about his lunch not being what he ordered. “I asked for tuna on white. This is wheat.” 

Days later, he would receive a tuna sandwich on white bread, eating only half of it. On another day, I held the small cola can while my dad took baby sips from the straw, and we joked that finally he was allowed to have soda on a daily basis. And at another lunchtime, I fed him diced peaches. 

A friend of mine has told me my dad was such a brave man. He was very clear on what he wanted and what he didn’t. He wanted to die with dignity, on his terms, and we did everything we could to make sure that happened. 

This blog post has taken me quite a while to write. I keep crying, thinking of my dad in that hospital bed. Thinking of the empty recliner in my parents’ home. Thinking I will never again buy him a Father’s Day card. (This year he opened his Father’s Day card in the hospital.)

My dad had a hard start to life. Things could have gone really differently for him. 

Instead he met my mom, and it’s a story he loved to tell:
“Do you know what the first word your mother ever said to me was? She told me ‘no.’”

They had me, and on their first wedding anniversary, they brought me home from the hospital.
“That year, I got out of taking your mom out to dinner,” he joked each year on their wedding anniversary.

The passing of my dad has left our family with a list of No’s. 

No more dirty jokes. (Here’s one he loved telling: “Want to hear a dirty joke? A white horse fell in the mud.”)

No more mischievousness. (When our son was a little guy, my dad loved teaching him “poems,” including “Beans beans the magical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot…”)

No more out-of-the-blue hearts texted to my phone.

No more hearing my dad say, “Hey Suri” instead of “Hey Siri.”

Ten years ago, to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday, I wrote him a special blog post — “10 Reasons Why I Love My Daddy.” You can click here to read that post, and see some family photos.