My Dad Would Have Been 72 Today

Today, my dad, Michael, would have turned 72.

Seventy-two.

It doesn’t sound old to me. It sounds like retirement, golf, travel, grandchildren, and long afternoons with nowhere particularly important to be.

It sounds like there should have been more.

When I picture my dad before he got sick, I picture him on the golf course, enjoying his life.

He never made a big deal about birthdays. He wasn’t really someone who made a big deal about much of anything. He was a man of few words.

But we would have talked today.

We always did.

September 8 has another meaning in our family, too. Today is my sister’s 19th wedding anniversary.

At her wedding, we got my dad his own birthday cake. So for nearly two decades, September 8 has belonged to both of them. Her anniversary and his birthday, two celebrations permanently intertwined.

And this year, that makes me extra sad for my sister.

A date that’s supposed to remind her of one of the happiest days of her life now carries this enormous absence alongside it.

Grief does that.

It moves into ordinary things and refuses to leave.

For me, sometimes it’s seeing a McDonald’s.

Sometimes it’s hearing Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September.”

Sometimes it’s something so small and seemingly insignificant that suddenly I think, Dad.

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