Cerebrovascular Accident. Spending my life trying to be half the man my father is. Stern, severe, lenient, brilliant, working stiff, a hard-on for anything worth talking about. Testing the waters with a failed marriage and a two-year vacation in the backseat of a compact car. We all choose between Hell or High Water, but with him both were taken just because you have to see everything from all perspectives. Build everything yourself, even if that means breaking permit laws. An attic into an upstairs. A shed fit enough to live in. A half-finished treehouse. A basement never conquered. We’ll work on it. Master of the grill. Burning all our trading cards. A mother as Irish as they come. A father as Italian as they come. Unsolved Mysteries and ****-faced games of cribbage. She’s in a place much worse off, and the home we had for decades is now someone else’s property. A breather was never taken with four kids and a 7am-7pm shift every day. We need to turn out in ways one can be proud of. Pick a winner. Cooking dinner and washing the dishes for a month as punishment for getting drunk. Dear Dad. Marathon Man. Too bad I was hung over, and I’m ashamed. It snowed worse than ever at that funeral, but you somehow managed to keep us on the road in a car with no handle for it at all. How did I become a cigarette-addicted drunk with delusions of literature? Not from you. The other half is much more Devilish. A man we can count on to make the right decision. Too noble of a man to go to Hell. Deep in diapers was when I realized I wasn’t going to be attacked. I love you, and I thank you for this life.