He loved you

August 13, 2006 — two weeks before the start of my senior year at Nothrop High School — my dad died in a car accident.

That morning, he called and asked if I wanted to go to the lake with him.
I was out golfing with my mom.
We had just started, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I told him no.

He said okay.

That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

Later that day, he was riding in a vehicle towing a boat trailer when one of the tires blew out.
The car lost control. My uncle, who was driving, tried to steer it into the median, but it rolled — they say two or three times — across the grassy divide from the southbound lanes of I-69 into the northbound side.

My dad was in the passenger seat.
He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

He was thrown from the vehicle.
They believe it rolled over him.
He died from a heart aneurysm.

Everyone else survived.

That night, I was at his apartment, watching TV. I was supposed to stay with him the following week, so I’d gone over to wait for him to get home.

My phone rang. It was my little cousin.
She told me I should get to the hospital — that he’d been in an accident.
I asked if it was bad. She didn’t say yes.
She just said I needed to come.

I called my mom. She picked me up, and we drove to Parkview Hospital on State Street — where Samaritan, the emergency helicopter, had taken him.

When we pulled up, my Aunt Darlene was standing outside.
She hugged me and said,

"He loved you."

At the time, I didn’t even register that she said it in the past tense.

Inside the hospital, it felt like my entire extended family was there — aunts, uncles, cousins… hell, even second cousins showed up.
They lined the hallway in the emergency room, and I remember walking through them completely lost. Everyone looked at me like they already knew something I didn’t.

People were crying. Avoiding eye contact. Wiping their faces.

I didn’t understand.
I was confused. Disoriented. Numb.

They sat me down in a room, and my grandparents came in behind me.
We hadn’t even been sitting for a full minute when a nurse walked in — clipboard in hand — and asked if we wanted to consider organ donation.

That was how I found out.
Not from a doctor. Not from my family.
From a nurse with a clipboard asking which organs they could remove from my father.

The funeral was a blur. I didn’t cry. I didn’t talk much. I didn’t feel anything, really.
I was just… hollow.

But there’s one moment I do remember — and I’ll never forget it.

After the burial, we went back to my aunt and uncle’s house — the same ones who’d been in the vehicle with him.
While people were putting food out and trying to bring some sense of normal back into the room, my aunt looked over and said:

“Just so you know, we talked to our attorney. You can’t sue us. Because they were brothers.”

No one had brought up a lawsuit.
No one was thinking about money or blame.
But that’s where her head went — not to grief, not to comfort — but to protecting herself.

It was like she has already decided who we were. That my mom and I — in the middle of this devastation — were somehow the kind of people who would come after family for money. That I’d lost a father and was already plotting some legal attack And the way she said it? Out loud, in front of everyone. No hesitation. No empathy. Like she needed to make it clear, just in case we were thinking about it.

But that was the first thing she wanted us to know.
An hour after putting my dad in the ground.
It told me everything I needed to know.

This was supposed to be family. People I grew up close to. People I loved. And in that moment, she made it clear how little she thought of us — how quickly she traded compassion for liability.

I’ve spoken to them a few times since — at family functions here and there. But it’s not the same. There’s no connection. No relationship. No warmth. People I once saw regularly are now strangers.

That comment… It never really left the room.

My dad wasn’t perfect. But he was present.
He showed up. He supported me. He loved me loudly.

He took me canoeing and kayaking. Kept me active because he knew I’d always struggled with my weight. Not to shame me — to keep me alive.
He pushed me to do better, to be better.
He wanted me to succeed like my mom, and not end up like him.

But what he never gave himself credit for… is that he was successful.
Maybe not in the traditional sense. But as a father? As a man who loved his kid?
He was everything.

If he were still here, I don’t think I’d be in the shape I’m in now.
He would’ve helped me pull myself out before I sank too deep.

And I miss him. I miss him every day.

I miss the way he looked at me when I did something right.
The way he praised me when I needed it most.
The way he believed in me — even when I didn’t believe in myself.

I wish we could’ve had one day together as two grown men.
Light a joint. Crack a beer. Share some laughs. Talk about the shit we never talked about when I was a kid.

But that version of life doesn’t exist.
Because he’s gone.
And when he left… I fell apart.

And there’s one thought that’s followed me ever since:

What if I would have said yes?

Would he have picked me up in his truck, and we’d driven separate from my aunt and uncle? Would me saying yes have gotten him out of that vehicle?
The one that rolled over.. the one everyone walked away from — even their family dog.

If I would have said yes…
Would we have been in his truck instead.

That question has haunted me ever since.

It’s the guilt I’ve carried every single day since that call.
Not always load — but always there.
This quiet, crushing feeling that maybe I could’ve changed everything, just by saying one word.

And even though I know it’s not my fault that doesn’t stop the guilt from digging in
It never really has.

I didn’t recognize it at first.
The drinking. The hiding. The emotional spiral.
It all looked like “just partying.” Like normal teenage chaos.

But it wasn’t normal. It was grief dressed up in red Solo cups.

The first time I got drunk was on my 18th birthday — just a few months after the crash — and from there, it just became who I was.
Or at least who I pretended to be.

There were stints of sobriety over the years, but they weren’t mine.
They were court-ordered. Temporary. Shallow.
I never chose to get better.

Not until this year.

But that’s a story for another post.

This chapter?
This one belongs to him.

To the man who called me that morning.
To the man I told no.
To the man who left this world in the blink of an eye — and took part of me with him.

He loved you.
I didn’t get it at the time.
But I do now.