It’s amazing, my somersaulting state of mind. I wake up in the morning and worry over my outfit. I mill through grocery aisles, looking for this or that. I laugh with Ryan.

And all of sudden, when I’m lying in bed or driving alone, you come back to me. I picture your face the way it looked after you died—the peaceful expression, your soft brown hair streaked with gray. I picture your face the way I saw it a million times when you were alive—thrown back in a laugh.

And I think, How can I get through this? How does anyone get through this?

Before I know it, I’m plodding through my day again, and when you come back to me I wonder, How can I have let you go even for a minute?

Yours is my first experience with death. I have known people who have died, even a good old friend, but never anyone who was a fixture in my life, much less the guiding force of my life. I have lived my twenty-six years as if a bit of fishing line stretched between the crown of my head and your finger, you gently pulling me along.

You are the center of our family. Since you’ve been gone, I can’t say we even feel like a family. Is that what it means to lose a loved one? To never be whole again? To go through life permanently broken?

I witnessed the final months, hours, and seconds of your life. I witnessed the arduous yet orderly process in which a body shuts down. You fought so hard not to leave us, and yet in this, as in everything, you guide us. Perhaps it was a small comfort to you these last two years, knowing you could lead your family across the great divide. We’ll all get there someday.

I am reluctant to call you a perfect man, Dad, even though in most ways you were. You were a man of integrity and passion. Of kindness and wisdom and joy. None of these words is too large for you. Even as we ache for you, you loom large before us and we aspire to emulate a life well lived:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
 to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
 to appreciate beauty; 
to find the best in others;
 to leave the world a bit better, whether by healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
 to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
 This is to have succeeded. —Bessie Stanley