My aunt asked me to write a few words about my “Outlaw dad” for his upcoming memorial. The catch was to keep it “obituary style, nothing too tear jerking”. Ummm, I don’t know how to do that. I tried and it was bland and impersonal. This is a man I’ve known for over 40 years. A man who I continued to have a relationship with on my own, because I wanted to. After he and my mom split when I was 6 or 7 there was no reason for me to seek him out, but 40 years later, I’m the one rushing to UC Davis to lie my way into the ICU and see him after he suffered a massive stroke. I’m the one who took the brunt of his anger at not being allowed to go home even though he wasn’t able to care for himself and I’m the one who advocated for him to get the hell out of the Bay and back to the woods and the ocean.
Maybe I kept driving up the long dirt road to Ramone’s barn, the one my dad built before he died because Ramone was a version of the dad that was gone before I got to be a punk ass teenager or a you…
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