Tribute to My Dad

A quiet morning in Finn's Garden.

Finn’s Garden

July 1, 2026 • 8:00 a.m.

Espresso, check.

Journal, check.

Pen, check.

Check on the garden's bounty, check.

Speak to the spiders, "Good morning. Thank you for keeping the bugs away," check.

Squeeze the melons, check.

Admire the deep shade of red blooming on Ralph's Jimmy Nardello; check.

Pick another cucumber (that's four this week 😊), check.

Wonder again if the blossom should fully drop off the tip before I pick another tiny reminder of my grandfather's garden. Check.

Sit and wait for God's message to fill me with light as the blazing-hot sun beats down on me. My shadow casts long. My pores open, and this week's toxins leach onto the surface of my dermis.

Then I ask, "God, what do You want me to know today?"

Before I hear an answer, a bird flaps loudly inches above my head. The tree's leaves hide her beauty, but it isn't long before she coos three times, and I know her name. She is the mourning dove.

The mourning dove. A symbol of peace and love and hope and new beginnings.

A spiritual messenger.

She comforts. She reminds us of all those whom we have loved and lost.

A sign of angelic protection. Some believe her presence invites us to notice that someone we have lost has come to visit.

She encourages healing from grief.

A sign to seek and find inner peace.

She symbolizes the Holy Spirit, who helps us follow the flow of life.

She, the one in mourning, flaps and flies away. Maybe she, like me, just stopped by to say good morning.

I sit and pray, Our Father, one time through. But I recite the prayer again because my mind drifts, and thoughts of other things swirl and flit away, as our minds often do.

The second time through, I'm able to focus on a line at a time. Digest the scene. Hear the plea as every word rolls over my lips, inhale every phrase, sway with every slight pause of punctuation. I do this in real time because I want to live only for today.

So, I pray, "Make me a good human—all the way through."

Then the flies come and push me to another corner of my garden, where I sit on the edge of a garden bed, next to one dead and one wilted marigold.

Another perspective grows.

Here, the flower closest to me is half dead, brown and dry. Half-alive, green and orange.

Quickly, I realize this old body doesn't enjoy sitting on the hard rim, so I move my chair into the shade of a tree.

Later, I learned it was an elm.

The elm is the tree I sat beneath, its canopy stretching over me like shelter.

The elm. The tree that my hometown was known for. Waterville, the Elm City.

The elm. Strong. Protective.

The elm. The disease that killed some of the strongest trees in my neighborhood.

The elm, whose inner bark and leaves heal wounds. The elm, whose prized wood teaches resilience and illustrates the ability to bend and never break.

In Greek mythology, the hero Orpheus rescued his beloved wife from the underworld. He enchanted everyone there with his harp music. He paused to play her a love song, and it is said that the first grove of elm trees sprang up from that very spot.

It's no coincidence that the flies drove me away into the shade of the elm so that I could write about my father.

From here, I can see my father's birdhouse, a moose cut and pieced together by his hands. The hands that no longer operate as they once did. The hands that shake. The hands that once carried me home after I flew off my Prairie Flower bicycle when I was only seven and didn't know—or maybe I forgot—how to push the pedals down and back to slow down on the hill that bottomed out on a brook on Ridge Road in Waterville, Maine.

That day, I wore my favorite royal blue corduroy skirt to play Wiffle ball in the corner lot at the top of the hill.

For nearly half a century, the memory of my dad carrying me home has been one of my most beloved memories of him. I have others, but that one plays like a reel over and over in my mind.

What is it, God?

Why do You keep showing this to me?

Is it to remind me how much my dad loved me?

Is it a gift because one day he will be gone and I will be left never to feel his hugs again? The ones that feel like he's desperate to go back in time to hug me and my sister more. So today he tries to pour in as much love as he possibly can into each of those moments.

Or is it something more?

A different perspective, perhaps?

Empathy for the man who was never the father he always wanted to be. Never comfortable in his own skin, never comfortable enough to let anyone see his love. The love that beat in his big, beautiful heart until the disease, the one that starts with a capital P, took away his ability to control. The disease that shredded the filters that burdened his life. Once foggy glass, then brick walls, built over half a lifetime believing he'd never be enough.

Not understanding that the time we spent silently watching movies together in the basement was gold.

There, in the space we called the dungeon but loved to haunt, is where I heard you laugh the most. It's where a brick or two gave way, and while I sat so quietly, you opened. You blossomed. You bloomed.

So maybe that's why I remember the blue skirt and your strength that carried me home because it led me to this moment, the one when I'm sitting in the shade of my garden remembering you.

Not just the superficial you, but the one whose laugh, even though time has changed its pitch, fills me with joy. The one who couldn't express his love in the way he wanted because he'd learned to reveal, to bare one's soul was dangerous.

And who is it that can hurt you more than anyone else in this world?

Your children.

I would never have hurt you had you given me the chance.

Well, not until I was a teenager and, like every other hormonal twit, didn't understand what being human was all about.

But now I do. Now, I know the sound of your laugh, the effort of your hugs, the gait that's fading from your life. I will always remember you as the one who walked me home.