iRemember
Some people leave a room when they die.
Others never do.
My father is still here.
Not in the ways people usually mean.
Not in signs or miracles.
But in music.
In memory.
In the way I tell stories.
In the way I love.
When people ask me what I think of when I hear the word "Dad," my answer is simple.
Home.
Not a house.
Not a place on a map.
A feeling.
My father was hilarious. Charming. Sarcastic. The kind of man whose presence filled a room and whose absence somehow fills an even bigger one.
He loved music.
Not casually.
Obsessively.
There was always a record playing, always a speaker nearby, always a reason to turn the volume up a little louder.
He was an amateur DJ and left his record collection to my firstborn.
The funny thing is, my firstborn inherited more than the records.
They inherited the music too.
The name.
The gift.
The rhythm.
Sometimes I wonder if my father knew he was passing all of that forward.
Maybe he did.
He spent most of his life in one of two places.
By the stove.
Or by the DJ table.
He was either feeding people or entertaining them.
Sometimes both.
In Pennington, St. Catherine, he cooked for neighbors the same way he cooked for family. Nobody stayed hungry for long around him.
And nobody stayed bored either.
He played pranks on his siblings well into his seventies.
A big kid balding.
The life of every party.
The kind of man people naturally gathered around.
As a child, his music annoyed me.
The old songs.
The endless records.
The volume.
Now they're the songs I reach for when I need comfort.
They're the soundtrack to memories I didn't know I was collecting at the time.
Today I keep a playlist called Breezy Castle.
Named after the family home he built in the hills of Pennington.
A place that carries his fingerprints even now.
When I play it, I can almost see him sitting there.
One hand near the stove.
The other near the turntable.
Doing what he loved most.
Taking care of people.
Looking back, I realize that's what he gave us.
Not just music.
Not just memories.
A feeling.
A place to belong.
A home.
And maybe that's why some people never really leave.
Because the things they loved continue through us.
In the meals we cook.
The songs we play.
The stories we tell.
The people we become.
I still miss him.
I probably always will.
But every time the music starts, he feels a little closer.
Like he's just in the next room.
Waiting for the record to change.
