I have been going through my office to finish unpacking the things I shoved in the closet when I moved in last January. In a bin of clothes that were my father’s I found a bag that I had never opened. Inside was an exploded tube of toothpaste, scratch paper for art making, a squashed pack of candy cigarettes, a box of Nag Champa incense, an open pack of batteries, and a book about living your life like a bee.

There is something so incredibly Rick Dirck about this assortment of items. The book and the Nag Champa are half covered in toothpaste (also very Rick Dirck) so I fish out a stick that isn’t wet and let the smoke fill my room.

*if you don’t want to read about grief or death, I suggest you stop reading here.

I have started going through the stack of notebooks that span the years my dad was sick. Something I have been meaning to do for a long time, but have never been quite ready for. I was surprised to find that the first entry where I write about my dad being sick is simply a list of notes:

• Will filled out and signed Sep 2

• Deb & Pat & Elmira (Power of Attorney)

• Make Copies of Documents

• Cremated, no burial. No urn bought. Sprinkle if you desire.

• “Whatever a service needs to look like, just do it.”

• Hospice Facility OK; prefers it so that he isn’t burdening anyone.

  • Who accepts Maine Care?

• Transplant 1-2 yr recovery if it works

• Mood change/depression

• CIRRHOSIS OF THE LIVER

Later, in a different notebook, his last night is represented by doses and timestamps (I was taking notes to share with his hospice nurse, keeping track of meds). That night feels like a dream, how strange to have such a concrete account to remind me how real it was.

10:00 am - Haldol .5 ml

10:30 am - Dilaudid 1 ml

10:30 am- Lactulose dose #1, 1/2 shot glass

2:15 pm - Lactulose dose #2, shot glass

6:30 pm - Haldol .5 ml

7:15 pm - Lactulose dose #3, shot glass

9:15 pm - Haldol .5 ml

9:15 pm - Dilaudid 1 ml

10:00 pm - Complaining of pain, call to hospice line. Nurse suggests increasing medication, can give Dilaudid every two hours.

10:15 pm - Dilaudid 1 ml

12:40 am - Dilaudid 1 ml, Haldol 1ml

3:39 am - Dilaudid 1ml, Haldol 1 ml. Fell in the hallway twice, cuts on arm from fall.

5:39 am - Dilaudid 1 ml

6:30 am - Haldol 1 ml. Confused

The sun comes up while I sit at the table.

I haven’t slept, maybe from 1am-3:30am?

Around noon I go to get coffee, come home & lay down.

Pattie comes in & tells us we need to go into dad’s room.

His breath is slow, Deb points it out by his collar bone.

1:37 pm he dies.

I have been trying for a long time to allow myself to look back and re-approach this timeline. If it feels devastating to look at, it is. I removed my page of handwritten notes that come between 6:30am and noon because it feels a bit too real to be delivered to your inbox.

I flipped through the pages of five or six notebooks and made copies on my printer, which have now been sitting on my desk for a month. As time moves on it feels harder to choose to engage with grief: to look at it, pick it up, and listen to it. When I am making something I typically use photocopies to move around and lay things out in an order that makes sense to me, but nothing about this makes sense and I can’t figure out where to start.

So, I start here.

I am happy to have made it to Sunday after a surprisingly exhausting week while simultaneously feeling overwhelmed by all of the things I wish to get done on the off days. As you know, this is the theme of my life and will likely never change but I feel newly confronted with it every weekend (thank you ADHD). I like my house to be clean and in order but on busy days I make a big mess and don’t clean it up so I spend the whole week annoyed by the mess and then I spend the weekend re-setting it all.

It’s rainy and I am sitting on the couch with Joni, about to dive back into a movie I got too sleepy to finish last night. The movie, Sans Soleil, is a classic that I have never seen and mostly put on because of the name. So far, I like it, and I am enjoying the pace of the slow and beautiful images.

I’ve been puttering around the house for a few hours: putting away dishes, cleaning up the back yard, taking a shower, putting the trash outside, etc etc etc. Anything other than what I intend to do which is “make art.” An idea so vague I might even argue that this could be accomplished in a mere five minutes but I don’t dare find out.

I am listening to the most recent episode of This American Life, caught completely off guard by the fact that it is a story of memory and loss. I would have probably avoided this if I had known but I am glad I didn’t. In the first act Lilly Sullivan tells a story of how her parents met and how this story is remembered differently by her mother than others and she wishes she could ask her father, who she cannot ask because he died a decade ago, what the actual story is. I teared up when she visits an old recording of her father, which she has been avoiding listening to until this point.

When I visited with Elmira, my late father’s partner, she told me she hasn’t been able to knit since my father died. This breaks my heart because Elmira is an incredibly skilled knitter and pattern maker. She has, however, been collecting vintage photographs and organizing them in an effort to find the narrative. I think of my own creativity and the things I cannot bring myself to approach. Instead I organize objects in my house to keep myself busy as my own way of making sense of things. Today is no different.

Things That Help

1. I bought Nick a food processor for Christmas and it has been a complete game changer for our home cooking. Last night when I felt like there was no food in the house I made pesto, tofu ricotta, and pizza dough. Magically they all turned into a delicious pizza pie. Yum! The day before Nick made a chickpea stew :-)

2. I am currently obsessed with this song and loving the demo version.

3. I signed up for a yoga class after work tomorrow, TBD if it ‘helps’ but I am happy to have signed up nonetheless. I got a gym membership that includes classes so I am trying to make the most of it. It feels daunting to go to new classes but I am trying to do it anyway.

4. This week started with dinner at Ali’s for her birthday and ended with dinner at Ramsey and Mikey’s house. It feels nice to have the week sandwiched with friends. I often find it hard to balance my schedule in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. This week I bowed out of a few bigger events to prioritize alone time and more intimate friend hangs. I am glad I followed my gut so that I can go to bed with all of my laundry clean.

   

If you’re still here, we made it. It’s 2026. Twenty years since I graduated high school. One year since Nick and I moved into our house in South Philly. Four years since we moved my dad into my sister’s house on this very day, before the end of summer came and brought The Big Goodbye. It has been long enough that I no longer count in days and months: I count the years. And here is another one.

Something about writing this after the year has turned to a new one is making me feel like I need to recap every-single-thing I have done, but I don’t want to so I wont :-) The most important thing is that we are here. And I have started flossing my teeth regularly…a real plot twist we were not expecting for 2025.

While I am reheating my coffee over and over, trying to do everything at once I read Lora’s writing: “What other moment is there, but right now?” and decide to start.

I’d Rather Be A Forest Than A Street

The picture above is from my dad’s birthday last year. Ali and I went to an outdoor sculpture garden and walked around. I found this under the giant three-legged Buddha and took it as a sign my dad was there too. When I was in New Hampshire for the holidays my cousin David, who is a mere seven years younger than my father, told me he sees my dad in everything, all of the time. I was surprised at such an earnest display of emotion in the place of his usual jokes. Although my dad was David’s uncle, they were so close in age they grew up as brothers. There is nothing quite like a brother you choose.

I thought I was done with death but I was wrong. My aunt Dot died just after Christmas. I don’t really know what to say about it other than it was unexpected and I feel sad for my uncle. It feels impossible that you can be here in one moment and gone the next. But, of course, it is. At the family party we do a Yankee Swap. I had number one and she was number two. She immediately stole my gift and I ended up keeping what she traded it for. I sent a text to my uncle to express my condolences, he simply replied “Thank you. It is a shock. Miss her dearly.”

I keep thinking about that and the way it says it all without saying anything.

Things That Help

1. I started using a CPAP machine for sleep apnea and WOW! I have energy. I am thinking more clearly. I am less irritable. It is amazing. The other day, after almost a year of living in my house, I unpacked my office and worked on some drawings. Pictured above :-)

2. I watched the 2010 film Poetry, one of the most beautiful movies I have seen in some time. They story follows Mija, who is on a quest to write a poem amidst family and community tragedy. I recommend it if you, like me, enjoy sad and sweet. A really amazing story of loss and longing, not for the faint of heart.

   

   

3. I am tucked in my bed listening to Calm Roots, texting a friend about their wedding in the spring. How lovely to start the year off with something to plan and to look forward to. Spring will come again :-)

4. I stopped thinking about all the things I haven’t done yet and started thinking about all the ways in which I have been working towards them. The simple truth is that you can’t do it all at once. It’s a process. Everything is! In fact, I remember one of the most Rick Dirck things my dad every said to me was something about how you have to have years of ‘nothing’ that are simply a path to the years of ‘something.’ Ugh why was he always right?

5. I signed up for a ceramics class at a studio down the street. THANK GOD! I have been wanting to return to clay for so long, one of my big goals for 2026. Nick got me a gift card to take a class so now I will get to go mush mud with my hands a few blocks away :-)

6. I have been on vacation since Dec 19th. What a treat!!! I am historically not the type of person who takes a lot of time off or goes on vacation, but our offices close for the Holiday. This year the way it shook out gave us a whole two weeks off and it has been so nice to have this time to myself. It has been a wildly busy work year and not having to think about work for a few weeks feels like the recharge I have needed for a long time.

Mail For A Snail?

I will never put this dumb newsletter behind a paywall, but if you wish to support my musings with a paid subscription you will be rewarded with my snail mail newsletter (like this, but maybe more art and certainly more fun to get). This is a tradition that has been on and off through the years, I decided this would be a ‘something’ year so..back to it! Just don’t forget to send your address.

October marked one year since I said goodbye to Scout.

The passing of time remains confusing to me, but thinking of her makes me notice that there is almost nothing in my life that has remained consistent over the last year, let alone the last five. Every part of my day-to-day looks different and I find it utterly overwhelming.

My life has changed so much since my dad got sick, since I moved to NY, since the first time Scout couldn’t walk, since I held my father and all of his weight in the hallway, since I moved back to Philly, and moved again to another part of town. I do not often feel the passing of time and, for that, I do not often feel just how deep the shift is.

When my dad was sick I was 32. I lived with Ali and Jeff and Cynthia and I was worried about Scout having cancer after the vet told me she had more lumps and bumps and we decided we wouldn’t do surgery again following the procedure she had a few years prior. My room was orange, I was moving out when my dad called to say he had his own lumps and bumps.

I lived in Philly for another whole year before moving to New York with Alex. It was another five months before we moved my dad in to my sisters house and eight long months after that before he passed.

I moved back to Philly two and a half years ago, after deciding I couldn’t live in a place so rural that I had to drive an entire hour to get a hug from a friend while I was falling apart. I started my job in May before I had even finished moving out of our place in NY. Alex and I broke up one evening before we had plans to go to the beach. Afterwards we both kind of laughed and wondering if we should still go to the beach. We did.

In the summer I started seeing Nick after several days of will-they-won’t-they dates, following years of will-they-won’t they friendship. It was a light in an otherwise difficult year. I felt I needed time to grieve my relationship with Alex but I wanted to explore things with Nick and there was something about saying goodbye to what wasn’t working to open up space for something that was.

I spent a lot of time visiting Nick over the next year-or-so until Scout got too sick to comfortably leave her behind. I think it was February of last year when I knew she wouldn’t make it through the year and, finally, October when I knew it was time to say goodbye.

In the days following Scout’s passing I met Joni, the dog I have now. The most woo-woo parts of me felt like it was a gift from the universe that Joni ended up at the rescue I was volunteering at on the same day we said goodbye to Scout.

Since I last wrote, the third anniversary of my father’s death has come and gone & I find myself avoiding most things because I know that once I dive in I might drown.

I spent The Day watching friends get married, which felt both like the furthest thing from what I wanted to be doing and the best way to spend a day honoring a guy who loved love and would undoubtedly choose the wedding over whatever wallowing I would prefer. When dinner was over and everyone was dancing I went outside to be alone, looking up admiring the star’s shine in the dark country sky. One of the workers from the event came up to me and told me that it’s so brilliantly dark on the property that when they turn out the lights in the barn you can see the Milky Way. He encouraged me to go stand out in the dark field, which I had been too embarrassed to do before he suggested it. After he walked away I went out in the field, which was exactly what I needed. I thanked him when I went back inside.

At a friend’s party Marisa and I talked in the kitchen about death-a-versaries and birthdays of lost loved ones: the dates that hold so. much. weight, the unanswerable question about how to spend the heavy days, and the shifts that happen when you find yourself with more of those dates in your calendar than years before.

I feel oddly lucky that my dad died the day before his birthday so that it all hits at once.

A few weeks ago I had a rare-for-me vivid dream where I watched lightening hit a building in the distance and I cried in my father’s arms while the building collapsed and he told me it was going to be okay. When I woke up I had a text from Elmira telling me that Rick, my dad’s former roommate (yes, they have the same name), was found dead. I don’t know what to make of the dream or Rick’s death. It feels too tender to talk about (re: drowning if I even try to swim in it).

This weekend I will go to his celebration of life at the very same place we scattered the bulk of my father’s ashes. Rick was family to me and his loss only makes my dad’s feel louder. I am dumbfounded by the weight of August.

The day before The Day Kelly and I went to the beach and watched the sun rise. We gave ourselves room to cry and reflect while we sat on an empty lifeguard chair up above the rest of the world. We sprinkled some of what’s left of our dad’s ashes in the ocean and went out to breakfast before I drove to New York. I took the long way through Vermont and when I arrived Alex and I went to Colgate Lake. Alex flew my dad’s kite while I floated in the cold water. It was, like the field and the stars and the sunrise, just what I needed.

I woke up early this morning in an attempt to get my sleep hygiene in check (yes, writing that sentence does make me feel old). Every sleep doctor or expert says one of the best things you can do is to wake up at the same time every day. I know this and I do not do it, but when I manage to get on some kind of schedule I always feel better. So…I try.

There are many things I know but cannot get myself to accommodate. Like how exercise is good for your brain and spending more time in the sun can help you have more energy. Drink more water! It’s simple. Of course it is not that simple otherwise I would wake up at 7am everyday, go for a hike, and bathe myself in sunshine before I even dare sit at my office desk. It feels tragic to me that this what I actually want my mornings to look like. and still, there is a disconnect.

Today, though, I woke up at 8am and made breakfast before biking to work. Tomorrow I will try again.

This image from ‘s Moodboard in their most recent email really got me today when I arrived home from the doctor, thinking about how long I have been having what feel like the same circular conversations with my primary care about ADHD, energy levels, pinched nerves, therapy, etc etc etc. I am slowly checking items off my list. Better at my own pace than not at all. Right?

It’s 8PM now and I am burning incense while I sit and listen to Leonard Cohen’s Song’s of Leonard Cohen, which completely knocks me on my ass every time I play it on the stereo. I got this record, an original pressing, from a record store in the outskirts of Boston. I got the sense that the clerk didn’t want to let go of it but finally let me have it when I didn’t flinch at the price. I always liked this album, but hearing it loudly over the stereo is a whole other level. OUCH!

For a music lover, I listen to very few records these days. I often opt for a podcast to keep me company while I clean or keep my brain busy while I move from task to task. Please, for the love of God (Leonard Cohen?) please do not let me forget the joy of doing nothing but listen.

              “It’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”

I am not sure how many ways in which I can I state that the passing of time simply does not exist until I sit down to look at it, but- here we are…again: A U G U S T.

This is the third August after, the third August since, the third August without.

I spent some time listening to this Young Rascal’s song today, remembering my dad, and letting his love for life lead the way: Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon.

I know that when you see this, dear reader, it will no longer be Sunday, but don’t let that stop you from listening to this perfect song about simply being.

I am overwhelmed by the amount of things I could share since the last time I delivered a note to your inbox, so I will simply take my own advice and not think about it too much. This is what the list is for. A pressure release that allows anything to come out.

Things That Help

1. Being outside really helps. I took both of these pictures just before I scribbled on the above page. I decided that as long as I put something on the paper it was good enough & I am glad I did.

2. THE BEACH. Wow. WOW!! The beach is magic. Holly and I drove to Asbury Park Sunday evening and went in the water immediately after we set our things down on the sand. I felt like I couldn’t handle August arriving until I dunked myself under the water alongside my beloved friend.

3. Youtube comments on oldies. It feels like one of the few places online where people seem to genuinely comment to say, in so many words, “Hell ya brother, I like this band too, that is awesome!” and I am here for that. Best wishes to the uploader, loved ones and fellow viewers.

   

4. I turned my phone’s color setting to grayscale. So far it’s surprisingly effective in making me look at my phone less. I deleted Instagram (again) but I still found myself scrolling whatever else I could, turning other apps into my new mindless activity when what I actually wanted was more mindful activity.

5. I got diagnosed with both sleep apnea and asthma. I did a sleep study after years of being told I snore (sorry to anyone I have toured with) and talking to my doctor about how utterly exhausted I am on a daily basis no matter how much I sleep. I don’t know if having a diagnosis will change anything but I am hopeful it does. A CPAP is not so sexy but being fully rested after a night’s sleep sounds pretty hot to me!! ;) As far as the asthma goes, I had a generic inhaler from my doctor to try out ‘just in case’ and now I have a steroid inhaler that actually helps. I am excited by the possibility that brings to my day to day, dreaming about hikes and bike rides where I am not wheezing or coughing along the way.

   

Today I am writing with no objective other than to write. I think this is what I am always doing, but it’s hard to get started if I do not say that part out loud.

I watched a video the other day on Instagram of a professional cleaner addressing their most often asked question about how to get started. Their answer was so simple: just start, “make it exist before you worry about making it perfect.”

I know this trick, but I often forget because it is simply so damn difficult to just start.

I set a timer for 15 minutes so that I don’t spend too much time thinking about doing before actually doing. I put broccoli in the oven and my thought is that when I am done writing I will eat and then I’ll move on to the next 15 minutes of cleaning up my house so I can sit down and really focus. Is this true? I don’t know, but it’s helping me make it exist without worrying about making it perfect :-)

Things That Help

1. The timer worked! I wrote most of this before I got Covid and was subsequently in my bed for a week straight. Somehow, I cleaned my entire house with this method (including deep cleaning the bathroom(s)!!) and then woke up sick as a dog the next day. Setting a timer helped me move from task to task without over thinking and kept my time blindness in check. It helped combat the part of my brain that thinks I ‘haven’t done anything productive today’ by replacing it with actual proof I spent an hour cleaning.

2. I discovered a park near my house, in a direction I hadn’t yet walked in. Going there and back amounts to a really nice one hour walk with Joni, a perfect loop for us that I have repeated most days before getting sick. I also started walking her with two leashes, one connected to the front of her harness and one connected to the back. So far, this makes her walk like a dream and gives me more control when a bicycle rides by. Joni was found as a stray, tied to a telephone pole, so she understandably has it out for LOUD and FAST things that zoom by on the street.

3. Recently I went to a show to at Launderette Records to catch Mopar Stars up in North Philly. It was so nice to see friends + DAMN, the music was just so good.

   I was sort of laughing at myself thinking of the meme format ‘I almost forgot this is the whole point.’ I only caught one of the other four bands before splitting for a much less interesting show at Union Transfer. They are called Beauty and how beautiful it was to have the gift of watching a band I have never see or heard of and enjoying every minute of it!

4. Like every other almost-forty year old I have started doing Pilates and am so happy about it. My friend Sonia is freshly certified and has been such a good teacher. It’s cool to have an access point to a world that previously felt like it wasn’t for me. I have chronic hip pain and after just a few session I can already feel an improvement :’)

5. I got a kayak!! I have been dreaming of having a kayak for years, and this year my dream has come true thanks to my friend Kate and her mom, who had an extra kayak laying around. I aspire to be the kind of person who goes out on a river or lake by myself in the mornings. This is step one. Next step is a roof rack.

I wish I had more to say, but keeping up with the theme of not over thinking it I am just going to send this off in to the world. I am grateful I am feeling better and oddly excited to go back to my office after wayyyy too much time at home. Summer is ahead and I am feeling eager to make plans before I forget and get too wrapped up in work.

Speaking of work, I’d like to invite you, Dear Reader (all 3 of you) to please join me for this big show we have been working on very hard! I am really excited to be part of this series benefiting the parks of Philadelphia via Make the World Better Foundation <3

We just added local sweethearts Hop Along, which feels like a full circle moment as I can remember meeting them years before moving to Philly when on tour with The Sidekicks. Both bands stayed in my tiny Boston apartment. Anyway, you can buy tickets to support our work by clicking that little button below.

Buy Tickets

I can feel myself getting overwhelmed by the number of things I have to tend to, with the amount of energy I have to do it. I wonder if naming it will help me, I wonder if forcing myself to look at it here will make me do it. I naively think it just might, and my proof is that after I mentioned I hadn’t yet unpacked my dad’s ashes, I unwrapped them and placed the glass jar they are in on a shelf in my bedroom, next to his last pack of cigarettes.

Imagine an Apple

In recent years I have discovered a lot of things about myself, leading to an ADHD diagnosis and the realization that I have aphantasia (the absence of the mind’s eye). Both often leave me in a place where I cannot think through things unless I am actively engaging with them (like I am here). I need to make lists, I need to be immersed in exploring a topic, otherwise it does not stick in my mind. A thought comes and goes and without writing it down it is often gone forever. You would think this could make me bad at “work” or a lot of other things I seem good at, but thanks to the ever rolling ball of thoughts that ADHD provides me with I tend to excell in a task based environment where I am moving too fast to think before I move on to the next thing. The issue arises when I have a blank slate, when it is completely up to me to imagine what comes next.

Years ago I was watching a scene in the TV show Everything’s Gonna Be Ok in which comedian Josh Thomas plays a character named Nicholas, who returns stateside to care for his somewhat estranged sisters after their father’s death. The scene comes after Nicholas is having a hard time in many ways that finally lead to another character, played by Maria Bamford, pointing out to him that not everything is this hard for everyone. Genevive, the youngest sister in the group of three siblings isn’t supprised by the suggestion that Nicholas might have Autism, noting that it could simply look different for him than it does for their more easily diagnosed sibling Matilda. Genevie takes Nicholas through an at home test. As they walked though it I noticed my own answers to the questions and in particular this one prompt about imagining a bird. When asked to imagine a bird he says OK. When asked what color the bird is or what kind of bird it is, he is puzzled. I was too. There was no bird, just an idea of bird. Until this very moment I did not know that people saw images in their mind. At the time it pointed me toward my own neurodiversity, and later when I heard a Radiolab episode on aphantasia I remembered this moment.

Aphantasia and autisim are not exclusively linked, but like ADHD they exist on a spectrum of neurodiversity and often present in tandem with one and other. If you can’t be bothered to listen to the episode linked above, maybe this common example of aphantasia will help: Imagine an Apple. I am a 5 on this spectrum. I understand what an apple is, I know that I know what it looks like, I even know that it is red, but I do not see it. I simply know it.

The more I explore these topics and my own behaviors I have started to think about the ways in which I approach my art practice: I never see what I am going to make, I just make. I draw objects all the time. This isn’t because I have a deep love for coffee cups (okay, I do), but they are usually what just happens to be sitting in front of me if I sit down to draw. My work has always been rooted in words, even when visual, which I now understand as a version of (or lack of?) my own internal visual cues. I am a record keeper, I jot things down, I write, I look toward practices that leave a trace of the hand. I do not remember through images in my head, I remember through concepts and words and objects. In this way writing becomes a way of thinking, and drawing becomes a way of seeing.

Anyway, I wasn’t really planing to write about this - it is just what came out when I sat down and I guess that is what I am trying to get at.

I wrote most of this on Sunday, but didn’t hit publish so now it’s Tuesday (or whatever day you find yourself here). This is a drawing of Joni, who I affectionatley refered to in my last news letter as Sunshine Dog. She is laying in a sunbeam in my bedroom just living her best dog life. I have been trying to use colors I don’t typically reach for. Today…I bring you pink!

I felt like I had a real weekend, which I almost never feel as someone who has the curse of always feeling like I should be doing something other than whatever-it-is-that-I-am-doing. The truth is that there is no right or wrong way to spend your weekend but it still felt like I did it right :-)

I slept in a bit this morning, after waking up at my usual 9am and opening up the shades to let the sun in. Nick went out and got breakfast for us + brought me coffee and a bagel right to my bedside table. After I ate I fell back asleep & worried I’d want to stay there all day, but I didn’t.

Soleil came over and we walked to the park & sat on a blanket in the grass. This is one of my favorite things to do with a person, especially while being baked by the sun. John and Ali met up with us for a bit & it was really nice to sit and simply bask in sun & friendship.

Things That Help

1. I love making lists so I am adopting this form of reviewing my week, reflecting on what feels good, or sharing things I am enjoying with you. Here is just one thing I am visiting regularly: a new podcast from Yowei Shaw called Proxy where they ask “what if you could talk to someone who’s been through the exact same thing?” and show you what happen when you do.

2. This week I reached for my bike or walked more than I drove. Part of why I moved to South Philly from West Philly was to have more natural movement in my day. It’s nice to be able to lean into it. I tend to do whatever is easiest first (hello, ADHD) so living in a part of town where it’s actually easier to grab an umbrella and take a 20 minute walk to my doctor’s appointment instead of finding parking downtown has me out on my feet despite the rain.

3. I am listening to records, and I just noticed the current track is “Sunday Morning.” At the risk of putting All Dogs in my newsletter two weeks in a row, here is an old music video we made for this very song. This is from before Maryn moved here, when I lived on Hazel Street in my first Philly house. It feels like ages ago and I am happy to have this time capsule.

4. I saw a lot of really good shows over the weekend, including an absolutely stunning performance by Ichiko Aoba at the Miller Theater, a great set by Sheer Mag at Franklin Music Hall, and a follow up at Franklin the next day with MJ Lenderman. My pal John, who also plays in Yowler sometimes, plays guitar in the MJ band and it has been fun to watch them continue to grow and very fun to get to help work on a sold out show for them in the very town we live in! I love when work and personal life collide in this way.

   Knowing about one million talented musicians I wasn’t sure what was so special about MJ Lenderman other than a spotlight but I have to say that after this show I got it. If you need convincing you should catch them live and if you can’t, you should watch their tiny desk and imagine you’re there :-)

Whenever I write the year down I have to stop and pause, confused for a moment until I realize it is, in fact, 2025.

A strange part of loss is that every change in your life is a change that happens without that person, a new you they will never meet. And an even stranger part is having to decide how to pack your Dead Dad’s ashes amongst the rest of your belongings. Do I put him in with my box of socks? & now that we are here, where do I put him? Right now he is still wrapped up, sitting on a bookshelf in my room with a few other things I have yet to unpack.

Recently I find myself missing him more than I can explain. I want to call him like I used to, I want to invite him to come to the shows I am working on, to meet Joni and Nick, and to see our new house. I want to hear his advice, I wan to ask him for the $200 I need to pay my stupid credit card bill on time and I want to lend him money for lunch when he doesn’t have it because he gave me his last $200.

Things That Help

1. I read Vicky’s Substack on imagining your time like a semester of classes as a method to visualize where you are putting your energy. It helped me realize that RESTING 101 needs to be in my Spring Semester and there is no possible way I can move on to another class without it ;)

2. Yesterday I listened to records while I cleaned the kitchen and finally hung up more art on my walls. I used an old spice rack to display tea + hung up my favorite coffee mugs by the coffee pot.

   It was Sam’s birthday so I listened to Radiator Hospital and was enjoying hearing him sing “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY” while remembering how fucking good Something Wild is. Sam is so casually prolific and I am always struck by his song writing. He just started a Patreon that you can follow here for monthly songs.

3. I adopted a new-to-me dog in January, which feels like decades ago (re: time is confusing) but I never wrote about it here after noting the departure of my old pal Scout. Joni loves laying in the sun and so do I. We affectionately call her Sunshine Dog and I feel like she is a real gift to me in these otherwise daunting times. In a little while I will drive her to the woods for a walk so we can both enjoy some time outside.

4. Dante wrote me a letter recently that was simply a list of things that felt good and bad, respectively, alternating from one to the other. It reminded me of a list I found in my dad’s notebook that made me smile when I read it. I think it was a tool of AA to re-frame his thoughts, I found it extremely telling and a beautiful example of who he was as a person and how I got to be the guy I am today :’) In fact…is that what I am doing right now?

5. Candace is coming to visit in a week. I am going to sob when I see her. I am lucky to have such deep friendship, that continues to exist across the continent. From the moment we met at the age of 18 we have been connected and it doesn’t even matter that I have not seen her in over 5 years. Friendship is powerful and I forget that sometimes when I am alone in my room. I appreciate this reminder and I think I need it much more than I realized.

Songs for Rick

In the last year of my dad’s life Ali, Cynthia, and Kyle worked alongside many friends to create this compilation for Rick. I remember making the art on a day he was driving me crazy and I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Drawing and spending time with the project allowed me to appreciate the frustration as something I was lucky to feel, something temporary, and something other than sadness and worry. I was oddly happy to be mad at him. I wish I could be mad at him now, fighting over something as stupid as cinnamon buns and spaghetti.

At the time this was released we used it to raise money and to share music from some of his favorite artists with him. If you know me, then you likely knew about it then, but I recently have been revisiting it and I encourage you to do the same. It provided me great comfort in that year + it has been a space where I get to visit the thought of him with ease. If you want to buy it, you can, and the money will still go into the pot of debt I continue to carry in the years after his loss. Something else I am sick of dealing with, but would happily do 100 times over.

Anyway, some day everything I write won’t turn into something about my father but until that day I will continue to visit him through this space & if you want to keep reading please do.

It is the morning of Thanksgiving and I am sitting in my room, next to Ozzy, who is asleep on the bed purring. I have been waking up early and purposely spending the morning adoring my sweet, black cat while I am away for most of the day pet sitting for some friends. It has been nice to stay in someone else’s house, without having the normal brain cloud that is always telling me I should be doing something other than whatever it is I am currently doing. It feels easier to be present in the moment and even easier to be purposeful about the way I am spending my limited time at home. This morning I walked Selby, the dog who I am pet sitting, at 7am in the Italian Market while it was uncharacteristically quiet and then I drove home where I made the coffee I am currently drinking and the same breakfast I make every day: the incredible, edible egg.

Make It Up As We Go Along.

I found this picture of my dad and his friend Dale one of the many times I was going through his things. They were friends as kids and Dale was one of the few people who turned toward my dad when he was sick rather than turning away. He furnished my dad’s room and gave him the bed he would die in. He took him out on drives, he offered to do laundry when we needed it. He was just there. In the summer when we celebrated my Dad’s birthday, which just so happens to be the day after his death day, Dale came with home made cookie bars and offered to take me and my sister out to dinner later in the week. May we all be so lucky to have a friend like Dale, when we are 16 and when we are 63.

I never had big feelings around Thanksgiving, coming from a family who had little tradition around it and not being particularly excited about a holiday that, at it’s core, celebrates genocide. My family didn’t cook much and the only time I can remember hosting Thanksgiving at our house was probably in the late nineties when we had an unseasonably early snow storm (is this just normal now?). We lived in a new development out by the county jail, near a lot of woods and fields. There was a plan to develop the whole area, but when we lived there it was just one solitary circle of houses with one little street. I spent most of my time at the neighbors house down the street or walking around in the woods with my dog. We didn’t live there for very long, because we never lived anywhere for very long. It was the only house we had where I had my own bedroom and it was the year I listened to TLC’s Crazy, Sexy, Cool on my disc-man over and over and over.

In a few hours I am going over to my friend Holly’s house to have dinner together. I love her, I feel lucky to have her, and I cherish her friendship as one of those special ones that feels like family. It’s how I imagine my dad felt about Dale growing up, and how I feel about him now.

Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I'll be

In an effort to have the kind of day I actually wanted to have, I made myself breakfast and sat down with coffee + my lap top and read some newsletters. The first one I opened up was Cody’s newsletter Monday, Monday about quitting Instagram for good. Which felt like some sign from the Gods that I came to the right place, after deleting Instagram off my phone for the 100th time this week & noticing that when I can’t pick up my phone to scroll on, I search for something else and eventually end up where I’d rather be.

In October I said Goodbye to Scout, my dog and dear friend of 15 years. It’s one of many things that feel too overwhelming to explain to you while I sip my coffee.

It has been one month and I already miss having a dog. I keep listening to this perfect song by friend Cara Beth Satalino and crying when she says “I used to be a puppy dog” and again when she says “maybe i’ll be a cat instead.”

I miss Scout and all of the ways in which were connected, the special language we shared and how it shifted through our shared life together.

It’s Sunday morning (afternoon?) and I am sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and doing my best to avoid the endless scroll of Instagram, which I have probably deleted and re-installed at least 10 times since my last newsletter. I am forever trying to get back to old ways of connecting with myself & finally landing on the thought that there are no old ways, only new ways that might re-imagine the old. I’d like to write more often but I hate the idea of *having* to do anything and even more than that I hate the idea of being a neat little product that enters your inbox on a weekly schedule, all polished and shiny and ready to consume.

I have stopped counting the days, but it is still true that every month since August 30, 2022 I have found myself confused about how it is September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August again. An entire two years and two months later I feel exactly the same. Summer disappeared into fall and here I am.

I started August in New Hampshire in The Green Mountains, dipping myself in waterfalls on the days it wasn’t raining & at the end of the month I went back up to Maine to celebrate my father with my sister + family. What a treat it is to find my father in the ocean, and what a devastating reality that I will never see him again.

I have gone back and forth over the years with different ways to share all of the stupid little thoughts in my head with you all, trying to capture them before they are gone. I scribble, I send mail, I forget to send the mail (To be honest, I have a “Life Update” from last year that is still taped to my wall waiting to find it’s way in to an envelope and to your door. I started writing this on new years and now it’s March).

Finding Space for it without letting it D/R/O/W/N You 🌀

2023 was so monumental and so difficult that I find myself not wanting to reflect on it at all, something about knowing that the more I think about it the more likely I am to cry. Like this morning when I sat down to write and this came out, wiping tears from my eyes while sipping coffee and hoping no one would notice from across the table.

In 2023 I had my first birthday without my Dad, I broke up with Alex after five long years together, I moved back to Philadelphia, I spent the summer falling in love & tending to wounds I hadn’t quite realized were there. 2023 is the year I scooped my dad’s ashes in to tiny glass bottles and sprinkled them in to the ocean. I said Goodbye a lot & I said Hello just as often. August was okay somehow, but it was November and October that really killed me.

I find myself stuck while time keeps moving forward. I find my dad’s clothes in my closet when I reorganize, or a note he sent before he stopped writing. I reach in to an old coat pocked and find his medicine bottle that we later filled with ashes to sprinkle over the fire in Kelly’s yard, or the butt of a cigarette. In my room I keep an ashtray that I can’t bring myself to clean out because I don’t know if the cigarettes are mine or his or both. Always surprised by the ways it shows up over and over, but also somewhat delighted by the way he shows up again and again without ever really leaving.

When something hard is going on Ali and I often look at each other and say “everyday is a winding road” & I know we are kind of joking and just finding some way to move through it, but it’s true.

Every day is a winding road
Every day is a winding road
Every day is a winding road
                                                                                              I get a little bit closer to feeling fine

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