It’s been going on four years now, Dad. You’d be turning 63 years old in November. Now that I am turning 40 myself, I’m growing wiser (and more disillusioned) with every day. I’ve never been more aware of this stupid human suit I’m wearing. It’s incredible what a difference a few years makes. I wish I could tell you all I’ve learned since you departed. I would ask your forgiveness for the times I articulated your faults on the page, just trying to understand. I would tell you that I understand now. I get it more, Dad.

These are the words rattling around in my mind this afternoon: poverty is a systemic failure, not a personal one. After you died, I discovered that it was a measly ten thousand dollars standing between us and our dreams. I learned that if you hadn’t been literally robbed of your cash, we would have had a home–those sturdy walls and saloon doors we’d sketched out so carefully. Why didn’t you ever tell me that? About the time you got robbed of ten thousand dollars and everything changed?

Today, Aunt Julie shared a picture of us that I’d never seen. It was taken on my second birthday, outside the house on Glenn Street. Someone (was it you?) made me a sheet cake and spelled out my name in candy corn. What I love about the picture is that as I am blowing out my birthday candles, so are you. You were ever encouraging, attuned, a gentle wind at my back from day one. God, I look like Autumn in the photo. A few years ago, unwittingly, I also decorated her birthday cake with candy corn. October babies.

You don’t want to be forgotten, do you? I know this because every now and again you pop up. A photo I’ve never seen. Your song playing on the radio. Your initials emblazoned on a barn along the interstate. But most incredible are the thirty-some-odd handwritten pages I recently received from a relative, your descriptions of our early days together. How did it take me all this time to realize that it was you all along? That it was you, legally disabled but spiritually sophisticated, who inspired my love of writing? I wish I could tell you all I’ve learned since you’ve departed, because one thing I know for sure is that you’d be listening.

What I wouldn’t give to scramble up a hillside with you today, sit at the top, overlooking some vista, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Someday I’ll get to reading those pages you sent me from the great beyond. But honestly, it kind of hurts to do so. I opened it once and a line jumped out at me. It read, “I believe in simple living and high thinking.” What more do you have to teach me, Dad? Are you still the wind at my back? What can I do to not be robbed of ten thousand dollars? Anything?