my dad died the day before his birthday and was buried the day after his birthday. every time someone gets excited about their birthday coming up i try to smile and not think about how they could die at any moment. that's not the way my dad thought though. he believed that life was worth living. every minute counted and if you didn't go after what you wanted then you weren't really alive. at least, that's what people say about him. i wouldn't know. he died when i was a year old. my whole life people would ask about him and they'd bite their tongues as soon as i said he was dead but they could've asked about him more if they wanted to. it never bothered me. i didn't know him and i suppose sometimes you can't really miss something you never really had. i wished they would ask more because he did a lot of great things. i figured if i couldn't have a dad i could at least have good stories to tell about him but people never like to ask about the dead. he played minor league baseball before he hurt his knee. he went to vietnam during the end of the war to rebuild houses and buildings that had been destroyed. my mom was a maid in a house of one of his friends. she didn't speak english and he didn't speak vietnamese but he spent the next five months asking her out on a date until she finally said yes. they got married, moved to houston, and then he worked for nasa. he helped designed the inside of a couple of shuttles. nobody ever asked though. the only reason i even know any of these things is because i read them. in newspaper clippings and on the backs of photos and in people's diaries while they weren't home. it was like he died and everyone forgot about him. the whole time i was growing up i never once cried about him. now i'm getting married in june and the only thing i can seem to think about is that he won't walk me down the isle. i cried one of those body shaking face contorting rocking back and forth cries when i realised this. i never needed him for anything before. my mom was so stubbornly independent and strong that she could do anything my dad could've done. yeah, weddings have changed a lot and in a modern day wedding she could walk me down the isle but damn i wish my dad was here. this is the first time in my whole life i've ever wanted him to be here. then after crying because of this i realised that it was sorta shitty of me to have never missed him until now after all this time that it made me cry even more. i have five brothers and i was thinking of asking one of them but i don't know who to ask. the oldest would be fair i think but he's also the least responsible and i don't even think anybody knows where he is right now. i miss my dad.

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