dad

my dad on a discord video call in my old bedroom.

my dad died in november 2022 & it fucked my whole life up. i feel like a part of me died with him. it's only very recently (like spring 2024-ish) that i first started to feel like i was coming out of the "surival mode" i'd been living in after losing my dad so suddenly. it's hard for me to talk about, but my sister & mom both died in 2020. so when i lost my dad so soon after that, it was inconceivably, mind-shatteringly traumatic. i am still healing from it.

the last picture i ever took with him. september 2022.

i love my dad more than anyone else in the whole world & i think about him every day. i miss him so much it hurts. it hurts really bad. but i know my dad believed in me & i decided that i want to live a life where he would be proud of me for following my dreams & reconnecting with my passions instead of letting the world grind me to dust. i remember him watching over my shoulder as i coded my Neopets pages & my old Angelfire site. he was so proud of me uploading all of my little drawings & ideas. so i'll keep doing it for him.

the last picture i ever took of him. Schoop's hamburgers, Crown Point, Indiana. september 2022.

this is a page where i will keep his memory alive, & upload my favorite photos & quotes & boomer-ass text screenshots from him.

Fat Man Facts

• my nickname for him was Fat Man, which was an insult one of the Mooninites called Carl on ATHF
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force was our favorite show to watch together, & his fav character was Carl.
• during my eulogy for my dad, i brought out a Meatwad hat & put it on while explaining ATHF. i forgot to take it off so i wore it for the rest of my eulogy which was apparently 45 minutes long (i think i transcended time while reading it). after i finished my eulogy i went over to my dad's body & put the Meatwad hat on him & then started uncontrollably sobbing & had to be carried away lmao
• i asked the funeral people if he could be buried in the Meatwad hat & they said yes. in case u don't know what ATHF is, this is Meatwad & the hat looked like this.
• his favorite word was "Madagascar"
• his favorite movies were Carlito's Way, Pretty in Pink (which he watched like 20 times), & Casablanca. he had a Casablanca-themed tie & he always said he wanted to be buried in it, so i made sure he was.
• he was a "Bernie would have won" kind of guy
• he was afraid of centaurs

me on the left, my little sister on the right. i think this was in 1999?

Dad with Gus.

a shitty drawing i made on his second birthday since he died.

dad's guestbook

u can leave a message if u want. here are some nice ASCII candles to copy & paste.

birches

one of my dad's fav poems he would quote was "birches" by robert frost.

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.