"You know what my dad always said..."

When I decided to start blogging - laying it all out there in a way that is so not who I am - I knew that at some point I was going to have to honor my father.  A blogger himself, I think he would have liked to have seen me take this on.  This past week marked the end of our first year without him, so I thought that it timely that I write about him now.  Oddly, the year mark was no sadder than any other day,  with all the monumental, significant things that have happened in the wake of his absence, I have missed him every day, usually at the 6 o'clock hour when The Bro Bro (his namesake) and I are having some quiet time in his room. Weddings, engagements, births...everything was bittersweet.  Even the little things, the way we decorated the Bro Bro's room, the artwork I created for it, I miss the validation that I got from him...but ultimately a list of the things he wasn't here for is in no way the proper memorial for my father.  His rationale was, as morbid as it is, "We are all born to die."  

I am not a spiritual person, my faith in most everything is weak, but I do believe that he is still with us.  In fact, every time I speak with my brother, he sounds more and more like my father.  So much so, that sometimes I need to get off the phone because it creeps me out.  More importantly, there are life lessons from my father that Dan and I find govern our day to day, reminding us that his legacy does indeed live on.  Often we find ourselves in moments of quandary saying to each other, "You know what my dad always said..."

1. Enjoy life, drink it in (literally), you can't take any of it with you when you go.
   
2. Breakfast is a meal like any other - ham sandwiches are game.
   
3. If you can smell it, it's done.
   
4. If you don't have leftover food, you didn't make enough.
   
5. You need to open your eyes and move things around.
   
6. Leave things the way you found them or else be woken up at some god forsaken hour to fix it.
   
7. If you say you need to be picked up at a certain time, you better be ready or you will be left behind.
   
8. You will always have people in your life with more - more money, more house, more car - get over it.
   
9. If you forget it, you can always buy a new one.
   

And the MOST importantly that which Dan and I fall back on regularly:

     10. Should you have failed to make enough food... "You can always order a pizza."