My dad died over the weekend. I don't know yet exactly when he died; I found him in his apartment on Monday.


His obituary gives the basics, but leaves out so much. It doesn't tell you that he graduated high school at sixteen (and swore no child of his would ever skip a grade). It doesn't talk about the years he spent teaching high school English, or how he helped Robert Wilson build The Poles art installation in Ohio one hot summer in the town where he would meet my mother. It doesn't tell you how he created WCET's "Zoo Zoo Zoo" program and put Thane Maynard in front of a camera. It doesn't talk about how he learned to master of martial arts in his fifties, and how he lived in a log cabin in rural Ohio for nearly twenty years.

It doesn't talk about how he could drive you crazy with his silences and his stubbornness, or how he could make you laugh with his absurdist humor, or how he could simultaneously terrify and delight small children with a raised eyebrow. He wrote books -- whole series of books -- for the people he loved, and he never stopped finding new authors and films to examine in detail, from Emily Dickinson to J.K. Rowling, from Perry Mason to Top Gear.

He was my dad, and I've already caught myself thinking of stuff to ask him, stuff to tell him, stuff to show him, forgetting that he's gone. I loved him so much, and will miss him so much.