Dear Dad,
It was your birthday recently, you cool cat 🐈. I always think of you, of course, but I'm learning the truth about you I never knew in so many ways. That I love you even more, respect you more, and feel even *more* for what you went through & lived is an understatement. This may sound weird to say, but I always had a strange gratitude that like mom, you also died when I was so young. Living most of my life with no parents felt in a way like a secret, wounded gift. I never really had to contend with how to become my own person apart from you. Poof! You were gone. I was old before my time.
To know you were likely hated in a particular way, by those with empty gazes and empty hearts and knives of broken teeth without soul; and that you have been surveilled and stalked, only deepens the compassion I feel for everything you lost in your life, never knowing who you could truly trust. Even in your family. And because of them. I know what happened in your youth too.
I know more now about what your devotion to me meant! That you were so (insanely at times) overprotective makes much more sense now, That you could be a violent dick does too, haha. I've been flooded with wild memories that suddenly all make sense like tetris. In your saddest and lonliest times when your work couldn't distract you (I remember all of the evenings you spent alone in quiet, somber) I bet you privately wondered if you were cursed, as I have.
We are cursed no more.
I am so truly honored and humbled to be your daughter. I will NEVER let everything you lived through and did for us be in vain. EVER! I love you. I had to survive your death after mom's was sorrowfully agonizing by going numb to my grief. Well, learning these truths about the incredible, harowing, and totally artful way you lived--that numbness vanished in an instant. Until we meet again, I remain your loving daughter.