My father. My memory.

Today is my father's birthday. He is no longer here. But it is still his birthday. I honor and remember him today. I miss his humor and wisdom. I thank him for being a good listener. I thank him for loving me. We had so many conversations as father and daughter that many might not understand. But I understood. There were ways our relationship was complicated. Alcohol got in the way sometimes. Often in fact. My mother and aunt tell me stories about him before the drinking. Before Vietnam, where he started drinking. But I didn't know that man. Still, I cherish the memory of the man I knew. It could not have been easy for him. A young man overseas fighting in a war heavily protested. His job there was picking up dead bodies with his hands. Bodies of some men he knew that would split as he held them. Imagine those ghosts.

I miss our talks. Drunk or not he was hands down the funniest man who ever lived. Fight me. And he was wise. And would kill for me. That complicated our relationship also. Because I knew he would in fact kill for me. Once he told me that he wanted me to always know that I could tell him anything. No matter how shameful or whatever. I could come to him. He said if I told him that if I had sex with nineteen men in one night but I had only chosen to be with eighteen of them and I told that last man no then I could tell him that and he wouldn't judge me but for me to know that he was going after that "nineteenth motherfucker." You had to be there. You had to know him. He called me while I was living in Georgia. He asked me if I was dating anyone. I told him no. He said, "Damn, it was somebody cute at the store just now. I could go back down there if you want me to." We had a good laugh. Again, you had to be there.

Our last conversation was also while I was in Georgia. He called early one morning. "Verily, verily I say unto you." He started conversations like that because he said that he and Jesus had to have some way of letting their listeners know when they were being serious. He started his story. He was drunk. But so fucking what. He said, "You know, the shark got a bad rep. I'm gonna tell you why. You will never be walking down a dark alley and a shark start chasing you. Shark ain't never gonna break in your home. Only way a shark get you is if you go to the ocean. So the trick to life is to know your ocean. If you a crackhead you can't live by the crack house because that's your ocean. If you shop too much you can't live by the mall because that's your ocean. Only way a shark get you is you go to the ocean and if you get eaten it ain't the shark fault because the shark just thinks you're food." You had to be there. To hear him tell you himself. I miss my father. He was ready to go though. He was ready.

After his first heart attack I found out from my aunt. He said his army buddies would have too big a laugh if he called home about some little bitty ole heart attack. He didn't survive the next one though. But he is somewhere, schooling lesser comedians.

I loved him and I still do. I could write a book on stories about him.