A Memorial Day Reflection and My Dad

There’s a particular tenderness to this time of year as we are tucked between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. For those of us who have lost both parents, it can feel like standing in the quiet space between two echoes. The absence is felt on either side, and the memories often come flooding in that are unexpected and sometimes overwhelming. It’s a season of remembering, of honoring the ones who shaped us, and of tending to the space they once filled.

In my last newsletter and blog (if you missed it, you can read it here), I shared a bit about a special family tradition I didn’t fully appreciate when I was growing up. Now, as I walk this path as a grief guide, I treasure it even more. The rituals and moments from our past shape us, and sometimes it’s not until years later that we look back with deep gratitude.

Folks have been asking how the trip went, so I’ll briefly share the highlights:

This year’s trip was especially meaningful. I shared it with my husband. While he gently cleaned the headstones, I planted flowers and checked on the little oak seedling I placed last year. It’s growing! A tiny bud reaching toward the sun. I lit a candle, blessed the land with water infused with lavender, frankincense, and rosemary and we played the songs my parents loved. That’s when the tears and the stories came. They always do, when we make space for remembering.

Though we told stories of many loved ones, this reflection is for my dad.

As you know, Father’s Day is just around the corner, and like so many dates shaped by grief, it’s layered, complex, and very tender.

When I think of my dad, a little smile always sneaks in. He was a gentle soul. By the time I came along, he’d softened and had the patience to pass along some life lessons I still carry today. Summers were spent learning how to run the stump grinder (yes, I later had my own stump grinding side hustle), running parts up to the farm, or sitting together in the old family screen house, sharing stories.

He was voracious reader, always a book by his side and several on his nightstand. One day, he came to me excited about a line he found in an old western. It was about a man who had died, and the man who buried him wrote this on his tombstone:

I am me, and you are you.

And we are each other too.

It was my dad’s roundabout way of saying: We are connected. Unique, but not separate.

I miss him. I miss his laugh - the kind that turned to tears and made everyone else "cry-laugh" along with him. Though our connection is different now, I still feel it. I still talk to him. And sometimes, he sends little signs to let me know he’s near.