my dad loved music. loved it. while trying to arrange his funeral services kyle and i had so many ideas for songs he loved that i've decided to make a CD of "brannon" songs for people who would like them. so many songs and artists remind me of my dad. the beatles. the eagles. the doors. jerry jeff walker. crosby, stills, nash & young. the marshall tucker band. on and on. im having a hard time cutting our edited song list down to one CD worth of music. thinking of just making it two anyway.
they're songs to remember by. i can see him singing them. some of the make me smile. sometimes it hurts to think that i'll never hear him sing again. he could feel music. i'd give anything to watch him drive down the road singing his heart out or sit at his bar with him, drinking a beer and singing like he was the only one in the room.
everything is easier for me. its easier to make funeral arrangements. easier to look at pictures. its still really hard to accept though. he's been such a big part of my life. its so unbelievable that he's just gone. that's what i'm still having a hard time with. there are stories i can't remember correctly that i think, i'll have to ask dad...but i can't. he was so smart and he knew so much. i loved listening to him talk or tell stories. i wish i had recorded every one of them.
i started crying in the car the other day because a toby keith song came on and a line says something about calling their voicemail because he had to hear their voice one more time and i realized i can't do that. dad never recorded a voicemail on his cell phone. i would give anything to hear his voice again. his healthy voice, not the sick whisper he had in the end.
i'm so glad he's not sick or hurting anymore. i know it embarrassed him for us to have to take care of him. he told me he was the daddy and it was his job to take care of us. i'm glad he's with his mom and his grandma again, i know he loved them a lot. i just wish he was here and healed and with me.
kyle and i picked out his grave marker earlier in the week. through the whole memorial process we've battled with finding things that were "him". he wasn't very religious. so much stuff is so cheesy and not "him". when we picked out the marker they gave us a book of "phrases" to help us think of something because we thought "beloved father" was too cheesy. he never said "beloved". we dont say "beloved". so many things in the books were just as cheesy. i liked a few, kyle liked a few, but then we found one that both of us immediately knew was so him. "to know him was to love him." it seemed so obvious after we found it. everyone who knew dad, loved him. i mean, the hospice director cried when he realized it was dad he was visiting (he looked so different). the person who came from the funeral home when he died cried because he knew dad. he said it took him 10 min to put himself together before he came over when he got the call. what a testament. dad was so kind to people. he was as i like to say, a good ole boy. a simple man, as the song says. kyle and i can't think of a single enemy he would have had. he would do anything for us, i know that. he did. he put me through an expensive college. there was nothing i asked him for that i didn't get. he loved us so much.
in the last week or two of his life, he told me something that really struck me the first time he said it. i told him "i love you" and he said "i love you too...forever." i said "forever ever."
i'm so lucky. i had such a good daddy. so many children grow up without fathers. so many people have bad relationships with their fathers or "daddy issues." dad had his weaknesses. loving us wasn't one of them. im so glad i got to spend 26 years with him. i just wish it was longer.
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