My dad worked his brand of offbeat magic on my mother at their first meeting, a blind date wherein he greeted her with “Shall I impress Superwoman by playing the buffoon, the sophisticate or the intelligentsia?” She was hooked. He had done all three at once, in the space of a single sentence. And when, a few months later, in the depths of a Chicago winter, she showed up at his birthday party with her face scabbed over from a recent Florida sunburn, he knew for certain that a girl with that kind of aplomb was the one for him.

The magic lasted almost half a century until, twenty-five years ago, we observed what would be Dad’s last birthday, he in the hospital cancer ward and me in denial that we were only days from losing him. Acceptance came hard. For the first few years, his February birthday was agonizing, the grief and disbelief paralyzing, the sense of my children having been robbed too soon of their beloved grandfather, the regret over things I wish I’d asked. But now I experience his birthday as sort of a reverse holiday—a time of discovery rather than loss, to reflect on the many inimitable gifts he gave me.

He left a trove of indelible madcap memories, wacky stuff only my dad would do. Who else, when screamed at on the streets of downtown by religious or political fanatics, would calmly listen to what they had to say before politely inquiring, “Does your mother know what you’re doing?”

Who else would meet me for lunch one day, chuckling over this: While walking the half-mile from his downtown office to mine, a seemingly deranged young man had followed him for blocks, muttering “Stop following me, man! You’re following me!” Dad had finally whirled around and thundered, “Cease your harassment of me while I am attempting to proceed unimpeded to my destination!” The pursuer stopped dead with “OK! Sorry, man! Sorry!” and ran. Dad was a big believer in the power of well-chosen words.

His most enduring stunt, born of his love of music, might have sent even Tchaikovsky reeling. He kept a cassette tape in his car cued up and waiting. When a teen in a souped-up car pulled up next to him at a red light, radio blaring, chassis heaving, Dad would gleefully hit the Play button and blast the kid out of the intersection with the 1812 Overture, complete with real cannons, adding his off-key tenor to each BOOM!!

Though in time I found comfort in these stories, losing Dad was harder than I could ever have imagined. And on top of my own grief, I had to explain it to my very literal-thinking autistic six-year-old, who calmly but firmly rejected the idea that Grandpa was “with the stars” or other spiritual explanations. He wanted the truth—so that’s what I gave him. That the body ceases to function but the spirit is inextinguishable. That the part we see and touch and hear goes away but the part we can’t see can never be taken away from us.

So Grandpa will be a skeleton?

 (Swallowing hard) Yes.

 Cool!

In the aftermath of explaining this to my child, a wondrous thing happened: my own sense of loss turned to found. In the years since, I’ve been able to see and hear and touch parts of Dad that I never did while he was alive. In many ways, we’re closer now.

We received a flood of letters and emails after Dad’s death, extraordinary remembrances stretching back through his career, military service, college years, and childhood. But one stood out. It came from a coworker of mine, who had lost her own father to cancer.

“It’s hard to let go of the ones who brought us into this world, but the time comes when their pain  and suffering must cease and we have to forge on without them. You will never be alone. You will have your memories of your time with your dad and somehow magically your boys will have an expression or look that will remind you of him.”

She was so right, and I have paid her words of consolation forward many times since.

I try not to dwell on all the things Dad has missed. He was a master’s swimmer, and my oldest son followed his example. Dad would have reveled to the melting point over my writing career, which he unwittingly inspired with his own writings and research I discovered only after his death. All his grandchildren have racked up achievements and experiences small and large, and most have nurtured quirks reminiscent of him that seem to me to be the true definition of immortality. So it doesn’t feel crackpot to believe that he hasn’t missed it all, that in fact he’s had a sky box seat. Just as my friend promised, I’ve never been without him. All these years on, I spend more time thinking about having him than losing him.

The gift of memory is the unbreachable conduit that unites life with life. I can feel celebratory on his birthdays now, unlike that final living birthday when, hooked up to a morphine drip, he worried that this was the way his grandchildren would remember him. My 11-year-old son led us all out of that morass, spewing outrage that his grandfather could think such a thing after a lifetime of never missing a birthday party or a ball game, a ride in a wheelbarrow full of grass clippings or endless hunts through neighborhood baseball card shops. “Grandpa,” he said, “was all about being there.”

And so he is, twenty-five years later, still here, not lost. We know it in so many ways that can never die, but never more so than when we happen across the classical music station and get knocked sideways by the 1812 Overture and those deafening cannons, our own throaty sing-along BOOMs echoing the buffoon, the sophisticate and the intelligentsia, all in one.

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Dad Lost and Found was published on his birthday, Feb. 26, in the Pure Slush anthology Loss: Lifespan Vol. 9  Available in print and ebook editions.

This post appears on the 25th anniversary of his passing. He is indeed still here, not lost.