Suzy Says

“As I watched my family sip champagne, I thought about how their lives trailed backward and forward from my death and then became borne aloft away from it. These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections – sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent – that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.”

— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

Dad,

A year ago today, our lives changed forever because you suddenly lost yours.

Somehow, we have gotten through 12 months, three hundred and sixty-five days, without you. This is how we have to live the rest of our lives, whether they be short or long: without you. But we are united by, and find strength in, our deep and abiding love for you and each other, as well as the unspeakable grief of losing not only a father, but a trusted and beloved friend.

In the year since we lost you, your youngest child has become an Emergency Medical Technician, working alongside those who saved you that dark November night in Albion and granted us another 9 months with you. Your only son has become a full-fledged member of the fire department which also helped to save you that night, and is teaching science now – the only son of a great scientist. Doesn’t that seem fitting? Your oldest child is now running a homeless shelter to help people get their lives back on track, in addition to getting her Master’s degree. Your granddaughter is starting university this fall, and your grandson is over 6 feet tall and 18 years old. I think you would be – or are – very proud of all these accomplishments. We wish you were here to share them with us, but we know that they were only possible at all in part because of the father you were, and the way you raised us to be who we are and in the belief that we could do anything.

In the past year, I have received literally hundreds of letters, e-mails, and cards from people all over the world who knew and loved you. Nearly every one of them had a special story or anecdote to tell me about you, how you had touched their lives in a way that was meaningful to them. What struck me most was that this was true of those who knew you professionally or personally. I began to think that to know you really was to love you. Each of these stories was a gift.

I recently sent some photos of you to The Peregrine Fund. They are writing a book about how the Peregrine was removed from the endangered list, and of course your pioneering efforts will be included. The Auk is working on a memorial journal, and the journal you co-founded, Ecotoxicology, has already published theirs. I hear that The Auk may have to do two volumes because there are so many tributes. The books you left to the British Trust for Ornithology were received with joy. They are going to form the core collection of the new BTO library in Scotland! Your important work in getting DDT banned, among other things, will live on always, as young scientists are inspired by you and continue to cite your work in new papers, new discoveries. The beacon has been passed.

And for me? You have noticed I have no changes to report. Losing you was such a big change that I couldn’t consider any others. I have spent this year taking care of our family, including Mom, who is very ill, and your beloved Margaret. I think of you every day and although I often cry with sorrow and sometimes with anger, I am grateful every day that you were not only my father, but my dearly loved friend and confidant. We had so many things naturally in common, and we knew each other’s faults (I can hear you saying, “And they are neither small nor few”) well, but loved each other all the more for them. No-one can ever, or will ever, love me the way you did, and I am lucky to have known that at all, let alone nearly 40 years. That was your greatest gift – of so many – to me.

I love you, old bear. With all my heart, with all my memories, now and forever.