Hey Dad,

The rattle of your keys in the door sent us sprinting up the stairs. We had all been perched on the edge of the couch waiting. Tripping over each other we threw ourselves into whatever piece of you we could grab onto. It didn’t matter that we were 17, 14, and 10. In that moment we were your children. Your terrified children. Age held no bearing on our behavior. It did not matter that we knew you had not made it into the city that day. That you were on the train as the second plane hit, and were immediately turned around to head home. You had missed your normal train that morning, having been caught up saving someone else. You weren’t just our hero, you volunteered to be everyone’s hero. So as that train pulled back into our small town, your day was far from over. You marched right back out with your crew to take in dozens and dozens being ferried across the river, providing aid, comfort and refuge.

Unfortunately, this does not get to be about that fateful day and a tale of heroics. Or how devastated I was that our last conversation could have been an argument over teenage angst ridden wardrobe choices. It burns my heart and mind to write, let alone think about it, that sometimes I wonder how it would have played out if we had lost you back on that day. That’s how the story ended for so many people. We were lucky. We were so very lucky. That’s all I kept thinking, for years after. But you would have died the hero. The infamous quote would have ended there. Died a hero. You wouldn’t have lived long enough to become the villain in our story. Our story is now about having to process the loss of someone still very much alive.

It was fifteen years later that I would have to start making the choice to lose you. There was the initial shock when the proverbial bomb was dropped, but the waves of realization and doubt that started rolling in were far worse. I immediately started questioning everything, all the little hints and signs, all the things that I swept under the rug for years cause you were my Dad. My Dad. To say I was “Daddy’s little girl” pales in comparison to how I looked to you, shadowed you and sought your approval even in those adolescent years. As an adult, you became my best friend. The only phone call I never silenced and the first call I always made in the good and the bad. And you knew so much of my ugly, but always stood by me. Maybe that’s what kept me by your side in those first months, hoping to wade our way through the ugly muck together and come out the other side.

But the hits just kept coming. Another woman. Fur coats, cars, vacations in our family spot. Money. So much money. Taken. Stolen right from us. My trusted signature helped seal the loans that would be used to help cover this all up. While I was working two jobs to pay it all back, my precious student loans, you were whisking her across Manhattan and cruising down Main Street in the car of the month. It was all unraveling right in front of me. The concrete proof sitting in hands, on bank statements, IRS letters and in photographs. How many times did I sit there across from you and ask point blank questions already knowing the answers? And you just kept lying. Or maybe you actually believed it as the truth at this point. Perhaps that is just how your brain works, how you can navigate a life like this. One that left Daddy’s Shadow in unfathomable debt and broken in ways I never knew I could break. Was I still supposed to call you to chat about my day? I suppose the weather and those dang New York Giants were a safe topic. Ones that wouldn’t dredge up the constant bile in the back of my throat when I tried to figure out a way to keep you in my life. Dad, my Dad, I had to let you go. It hurt too much to play pretend with you. That wasn’t us. It never was, and not how I wanted our story to evolve. So now just like my favorite villains from my beloved comic book pages, there will be no redemption arc for you. I will never know your true origin story, of where it all went wrong or if it was one really bad day that could drive even the best of us to madness.

I took time, a few years of it, to go through those scripted “stages of grief”, to “lose you” by choice. Slowly healing, I will hold on to what pieces I can. The good pieces that are such a part of me, to extract them would certainly be my final undoing. I will continue to work hard, no matter the job before me. If I am going to do something, I am going to do it at 150%, or not bother doing it at all. When I want to treat myself, I will save up and do it right, no bargain basement deals when it comes to luxury. I will never stop seeing the world through the lens of a camera, and one day I may even do so through the one you bought me that I still have stashed away. I will stop cursing my short, sturdy legs, identical to yours, and hope they carry me through just as many painless miles of city blocks and mountain tops. When I overhear the classic argument of “who does it better”, for now I will still bow out. But I know one day, I won’t be able to silence your voice anymore and chime in with “New York does it better, period.” And then I can be in the presence of a Brooklyn Babka without getting nauseous. Maybe even wax poetic about all its layers compared to yours, to ours. Ironic as some of these lessons may seem now, I want and need to believe they came from a once real place within you, to teach to your children. I have no goal to extend an olive branch, or build back even a superficial relationship. I simply want to honor the man who was once my superhero, and just cherish that part of our story.