Exactly one year ago today, at this very moment, I was going through the hardest and most difficult thing I’ve ever had to experience.

I was watching my dad die after being the person to make the decision to pull him off life support.

If I were in a gang, would that count towards a teardrop tattoo under my eye?

My dad and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye; in fact, we fought a lot. There were times when we went a few months without speaking. That whole time passed around 2004, when I realized that I needed to let go of all the bullshit from the past that I held on to (you moved out! you’re seeing some other woman! you have terrible fashion sense!) and just accept him for who he was. Our relationship was, in my opinion, great after that. If not great, then much, MUCH healthier.

As I get older, and find myself in situations I didn’t want to be in, I understand some of his actions a bit more. He would get mad when I’d came to him for money when I was in college, which I realize now not because I needed it, but that he didn’t always have it. He just didn’t know where to focus that energy.

When he hid a lot of stuff he did with the woman he was seeing for several years from my brother and I (I mean going to movies and taking trips, you pervs), only to find out in roundabout ways what he was up to, he thought he was protecting Phil and myself. He just didn’t know that was doing more harm than good.

When he would get mad at minorities, I realize…well, no, that was just him being rude.

He worked his ass off to get sober and stay sober for 24 years after his addiction almost cost him his job and his career. It’s ironic that 12 Steps saved his life, then falling down 12 steps ended it.

He was blunt, sloppy, self-loathing, intelligent, fiercely loyal, goofy, recovering from addiction, button pushing, loving, emotional, scary, comforting, heroic, cowardly, honest, lying, scared, fearless, giving, and frugal. He was a handsome man that let himself go. He was a vain man who was too angry with himself to take care of himself.

He would have been 57 next Thursday, July 29. He passed one week before his birthday. Because he and I shared a love of pizza, our family had it on his birthday last year, and decided that July 29 will henceforth and forevermore be known as Pizza Day. If you remember next Thursday, try to grab a slice, then call your parents. Talk with your mouth full. They love that.

My dad didn’t know his father, some bastard named Chuck Cauley from Chicago who drove trucks (yes, if you were related to him and stumble upon this, consider this sentence an open invitation to get in contact with me. I want to meet you, even though I think your grandfather/father/whatever is a douche. I bet you’re alright.). Chuck rolled in to town for the last time when my dad was 5 (1958), and then never came back. Maybe that’s why I like Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights so much.

I’m about now at the moment in time where, one year ago, he took his last breath. When you make the decision to pull someone off life support, you don’t get to ask them if you made the right decision. You don’t get to find out if they’re one of those .05% cases where the person wakes up years later and is Robin Williams. You have to live with it. Based on the facts we had at hand, I think we made the awful, right decision. He crowed at me time and again through his life that he NEVER wanted to be on extended life support. Like, there were times when he made me repeat it to him. I think he’s where I get my obsession with death.

I miss him fiercely. What’s scarier than the hurt, though, is the idea that I may forget what he sounded like. I see him occasionally in my dreams, and he sounds the same. I fear the day I see him in a dream and his voice has been replaced with Dr. Zoidberg’s.

After he passed, I sat in what must be shock, a complete fugue state where I couldn’t do anything but stare into the distance and breathe. Voices sounded like they came from underwater. Everything had a soft edge to it. If I ever have a conversation with Glenn Beck, I now know how to cope with it.

We went downstairs, and I dealt with the valet parking ticket. The woman behind the counter informed me that we owed $23 for parking. I looked her in the eyes and said this:

“Is there any discount for a family that just had to watch their dad die?”

She silently stamped the ticket and passed it back, no questions asked.

It was the day before my girlfriend’s birthday. Happy birthday Danielle! The perfume we got you is called Stink of Death.

We drove off into the evening, into the rain, into the rest of our lives.