The anniversary of Dad’s passing came and went January 28 without much fanfare, but it offered plenty of space for reflection and memory hit-spinning about the rich legacy he left us four short years ago. I thought on all the trips we went on, the in-law holiday vacations he so graciously agreed to attend (like the 2005-ish Thanksgiving trip to Cashiers, NC pictured above, the one where we went on a hike and he stepped in dog doo-doo and tracked it into the car and everyone gagged and he cussed himself), the visits, the dinners around our kitchen table, his language fluencies, the enthusiasm for ancestral lore, his penchant for instant iced tea, his “irregular”-priced fashion sense, the flute-playing, the gift of his piano accompaniment during high school cello competitions and all the times he tried to order Caldo at any Mexican food restaurant, even when it wasn’t on the menu. Ever. He was a renaissance man by every measure. And he is missed!

But I remain grateful for one Dad moment in particular — a phone call conversation that yielded my own personal north star. My big life a-ha moment! When I was steeped in panic and trauma during the challenging senior caregiving misadventure that nearly drowned me several years back, Dad called me at work one to offer his ear and counsel. I immediately shut the office door and crawled under my desk. Dad listened to me rant and cry and complain about everything that was awful about that big hairy, yucky situation. And when my sniffling finally subsided, he asked, “But what did you learn from this?” My first thought was an apoplectic, “That I’ll never, ever agree to be someone’s power of attorney and successor trustee again!!” Sniffle. Sniff. Sniff. And that was the angry answer I stood on for a long while after — until Dad died a few months later and I was forced to confront that big question again.

The truth is, I learned everything about living from that big hairy, yucky situation. And I learned even more from Dad’s unexpected illness and passing. His question — eventually — put all that “WTAF?” in perspective: that we learn the good stuff, the helpful, lifechanging stuff, when we go through our most treacherous, heartbreaking, horrifying moments, the ones we don’t see coming. These are the experiences that teach us how to navigate and survive and ultimately, to help others. The answer to Dad’s question is what appears in the chapters of Grand Plans: How to Mitigate Geri-Drama in 20 Easy Steps and in this blog, newsletter and social media posts. I am grateful to Dad for asking the question and am passing it on to anyone in the middle of some crazy life cray: What did you learn from this? I promise the answer will one day be freeing.