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.

I’ll never forget being around 12 years old and hearing my dad address another adult by Mr+surname. It was Mr Palmer who organized the little league I grew up playing in and my dad coached. In school we were forced to address teachers and staff as Ms, Mrs or Mr but at that instance I realized treating others with respect is a choice

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.

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.

His fists.

I thought that my Dad always killed flies with extreme force, until I saw him releasing them outside from his fist.

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.

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.

It’s a tie between him repeatedly raping my sister in our shared room while I was present and when he shot my viszla in front of me. Good times, dad. Happy father’s day.

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.

When he died, we all could finally breathe.

I don’t think he ever quite readjusted to civilian life after his time in World War II. He talked of it constantly, watched documentaries and war pictures.

My dad, my brother(13) and I (16) were on a resort scuba dive (we borrow their gear, and get a ride on their boat, and follow their leader during the dive). Descending down a line, with my dad following the dive lead, then me, then my brother.

About 60 feet deep, I see my dad jerk suddenly, followed by a bunch of bubbles. I see him grab his octopus… Another spasm and more bubbles.

I watch as he swims down to the dive leader, and grabs his octopus, taking in and releasing a breath. He signals to dive lead he needs to surface. Dive lead grabs his octopus and replaced it with my dad’s original regulator… Another spasm, and he begins emergency surfacing. My brother and I follow. Dive lead has a Merry dive all alone.

At the surface, we find that the rubber bits on my dad’s equipment (regulator, and octopus) had deteriorated, and broken at depth. He had lungs full of water, and spent the next half hour barfing and coughing it up.

That’s about all I got, still brings me to tears twenty some odd years later to just think about it

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”