He held me close to him, a hard, heavy hug, clasped tightly together; we held it for just a beat longer than normal until we pulled apart. Usually he would tell me he loved me and was proud of me but today, today he went off-script.

“You know, I’ve always admired how you can always get yourself out of a situation my girl--you can go out and get yourself another job and not miss a beat,” he said.

He looked so tired, but he was always tired. He looked really red, but the Kentucky weather had just given way from cold to full-fledged, skin searing summer. He spent a lot of time driving and he had spent a lot of time drinking, so the red wasn’t really new nor was it helped by the tomato red button-up he wore.

“Thanks Dad,” I replied. I could not feel any truth in his words, I felt like a failure.

It was 2008 and the housing market and economy were swirling the bowl, about to flush completely down the toilet. I had just finished a contract with a temp agency, unable to accept it permanently due to the long commute and skyrocketing gas prices. My husband worked in a kitchen while going to culinary school and we had a little girl who either needed us or daycare, yet another cost. Considering the seeming impossibility of the situation, I had to turn it down and despite my strong reluctance, I reentered the collections field. I was good at collections and was quickly rehired at a place I’d left a few years prior.

Dad had developed a sixth sense about when things were about to turn emotional and he fought to head things off at the pass. “Don’t be so hard on yourself Jenny. You’ll figure it out. I look at you girls and I see how you are with your kids. I know you three are better parents than what you got.”

I sniffed hard, trying to prevent the avalanche of snot and tears fighting for release. I can still see his face when he said those words to comfort me—a face that had once scared me, reduced me to nothingness now showing empathy and concern. I will always know every inch of that face because every time I look in the mirror, it is the same face that stares back at me.

I held off the tears and managed to, as his mother would say “dry up.” Instead, I said, “Don’t forget Hilary’s recital tomorrow, we have to be there by five.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket. He was a creature of habit and each day he put a new piece of paper, folded in fours, in his breast pocket along with a nice pen, earned from his years of service at his job. He wrote 5/17/08-Hilbil recital; no need for location, he had trouped to the same spot for the many years as my sisters and I endeavored to take dance lessons.

He grabbed himself a Dr. Pepper from my fridge for the road (he lived a grueling block and a half away), told me he loved me, and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. I watched him get in his little white car and drive off, just as I had watched him drive off hundreds of times before, except it was one of those times—a time when you’re doing something for the last time but you don’t yet know it is something you’ll never do again.

Like his other arrivals, this one had been unannounced. He was in charge of a chapter of a society cloaked in secrecy; thus, responsible for the monthly newsletter. He would arrive after work acting irritated at doing the newsletter, but happy to have dinner with us or spring for pizza.

He would make me laugh so hard at the drama and shenanigans of some of the members I could barely type, then he’d say, “How d’ya make that sound good?” But we did, always managing to give the stories dignity they didn’t really deserve.

This time with him was more fun than we had shared in years. I had moved to Michigan with my husband, but after Hilary was born, I wanted to be back to the place and people I knew. My unhappiness there was intense and dad knew it, he recognized it immediately because for so long, he had been the source. Dad had started dabbling in housing/rental units and when a property came up for sale by a friend of his who had passed, he snapped it up and called me.

“Do you still want to come home?” he asked gruffly.

I was on the couch, incapacitated by a stress related migraine. I sat up. “Yes! How?”

“I bought a house on Columbia for you my girl. It’s not going to be ready for a couple of months, but you all can stay with me until it is. That’ll give you some time to get set up down here,” he reasoned.

I was floored because my pride had kept me from admitting to him that he had been right about Michigan. He had told me not to go, but like all young, headstrong fools, I went. What his pride would not let him say was this was his way of helping me find happiness; a paying of a debt, to make up for the loss of having not been there for me when I had needed him before.

Living with him again had been odd; I had not done that on a full-time basis since I was eleven.

I found the rules hadn’t changed. He was an absolute stickler for neatness in that he liked things to be neat, but preferred that others made sure they got and stayed that way. The fear of his temper threatened to bubble to the surface, but he had spent years deeply enmeshed in AA, so much of that was gone. He was rarely home, spending much of his time at work and in AA meetings; he liked introducing us to his sponsors and grandsponsors when they stopped to visit.

They had all easily won his affection and it made me a bit jealous. He was more than happy to help them any time of the day or night and while he would do the same for me, there were usually strings, conditions, and constant reminders of that help from him yet these people—perfect strangers-- were able to win his affection without paying a price.

His phone rang with perpetual need: all male, all the time it seemed. I asked him why he never sponsored women.

“I’m too distracting for the ladies,” he grinned. (He had the best grin, it was devilish and sincere at the same time.)

“Really dad?” I rolled my eyes, reduced to the actions of a teenager, but we had never shared those kinds of exchanges since I had spent very little time with him in my teens.

“Your old dad is a silver fox,” he replied. “These ladies see me and they want to drag me down the aisle, not work the program.”

There was truth to his words though. Women did tend to find him quite the catch, he was middle aged eye candy. In the 80s, divorce was quite popular and my friends’ single mothers would eye him hungrily and ask if my parents were still together, which I found utterly revolting.

What was funny was that the only concession he ever made to vanity was forcing my sister and I to dye his hair, using the Just for Men line, when he started to go gray. This was a chore we hated since we were ten and eight respectively, and not skilled enough to avoid dabbing dye on his ears, neck, towel, chair, and essentially every surface in the Tri-State.

When I had come back, he had told me about his secret society membership and, ever the planner, showed me the sheepskin scroll that declared him a member—his strong signature on the bottom, signed with confidence, dated May 17, 2005. He took out the apron, housed in a long blue cylinder.

“Do you wear that to meetings?” I asked.

“Nope,” he replied. “You put this on the body when the person dies.”

“And they give it to you right away? That seems morbid.”

“We’re all gonna die my girl,” he replied. “I’m not afraid to die. I’m right with God. I’ve got great girls and grandkids. It’s been a good life.” Putting the apron back in the contained, he said, “Now, I know that people say that when they die, they want you all to get on with your lives and not be upset, but not me. When I die, I want you all to stand around and scream and cry and carry on. I want you think about me and cry and cry. I don’t want you to ever get over it,” he chuckled.

“Well, you’re what? Fifty? I have a good twenty or thirty years to muster up enough grief to do you justice,” I retorted.

We laughed together at our little zingers like two innocents, not realizing time was rapidly, rapidly running out; that his hourglass was almost empty.

When he was young, Dad had visited a psychic who read his palm and told him his life line was short; she’d looked into his future and told him he would never be an old man. Like all of the bits and stories that families pass down, I had heard this one again and again. Perhaps he embraced her words and went head on into life, but at times, it seemed like he was trying to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy—there were many risks he took, many choices he made that probably should have sent him to an early grave, but he bounced back and dodged the reaper with amazing skill.

We had been taking a nap when my phone vibrated. When I’d gone to sleep, I thought of the day as “the day of Hilary’s recital,” completely unaware that it would have a new name, a completely different permanent association in a short time.

“They’re taking dad to the hospital,” said my sister Melissa. “I’m almost there to pick you up.” I grabbed my things, my daughter, and her costume.

“If he didn’t want to go to the recital, he could’ve just said so,” I joked, climbing into her car.

“Well, that, or he was in the mood for some hospital food,” Melissa laughed, and we reminisced about his fondness for institutional meals. When he visited us after having our babies, his purpose was twofold: meeting his grandchildren and making sure that the meals were consumed; he had a special fondness for hospital Jell-O.

We had barely arrived when Melissa and I were called to a private consultation area. Dread began to creep in as we were told it was “bad” by our dad’s wife. My sister and I exchanged glances, our sisterhood has been forged over protecting and guarding each other from the drama propelled at us by others, our look said that this was likely an over-exaggeration.

Melissa chewed her thumbnail, eyes filling and receding; I worried.

The doctor came in to deliver the news that neither of us had contemplated—Dad was gone; felled by a heart condition that was so serious that if it had occurred right there in the hospital they would not have been able to save him. As he walked us back, I convinced myself that when we got there, he’d be sitting there grinning having scared us beyond comprehension.

That was not the case.

“How is this real?” We were alone with his body, a body that had given us life, now devoid of life, the loss of him completely unfathomable.

She shook her head, words impossible. I slipped my hand into his and cried in a way that I had not known was possible. I wanted my tears and grief to make him wake up, but he was unmoved by it. I wanted to believe that the tears splashing on him from us would form some strange alchemy and bring him back to life, but they didn’t. Our life together passed before me—he had made his amends, he had made peace with his life, he believed deeply in God, and now would be with Him. I realized my tears were for me, for my sisters, for those of us clinging to the mortal coil still—after years of maintaining an exhausting life, experiencing much of what life has to offer, never giving himself a break or letting himself slow down for a minute, Dad was still and had found his peace.

Everything changed that day. It was now the day dad died. He went from being Papaw Dave, who would hold the kids on his lap and watch PBS Kids, merrily eating Kraft singles with them to being someone who would consist mostly in their memories, constructed of stories we would tell them. My sisters and I were young, there would be other children who would never get to know him.

When someone announces a death of a loved one, well-meaning liars will quickly tell them, “The loss gets better with time.” Oh, but it doesn’t. The relationship we had was deeply complex, adversarial at times, but the pieces were put back together and every day that comes and goes without him is underscored by loss. This loss wakes up at the oddest times—we loved Motley Crue and would listen to them on repeat, particularly (ironically) “Kickstart My Heart.” Now on the dark side of my thirties, I still know every single word and guitar lick, but have been rocking out in my car in the most embarrassing way, only to find tears streaming down my face, the loss of him unbearable.

We are none perfect. My dad taught me that we have to move past those imperfections and keep going. He was all or nothing—he did not accept excuses, he did not accept giving less than 100%. The only other person I’d ever lost was my grandmother and for years, I could feel her spirit around me and I would dream of her constantly, until I grew up a little bit. She seemed to stay because I needed her. With my Dad, I have not had the same experiences—I rarely dream of him (when I do, it is excruciating) and I have never felt his presence. My dad knows I need him, but he did not stay because he knew he had taught me to get on with life and take care of myself.

The Silver Fox got his wish—while we didn’t scream and carry on, we have certainly cried. And I have never gotten over losing him.