Corned Beef. That was the last thing I ever talked to my dad about. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I’d just moved up to Portland two and a half weeks before. I was making the standard St. Paddy’s day meal in my little NW apartment and rather than ask my mom or my cousin or anyone from the Irish side of my family, I thought it best to consult my Slovakian father. This made sense, you see, because my dad often took the lead in special occasions meals– Easter brunch, Christmas Eve dinner, birthday BBQs, etc. I don’t think he liked corned beef (or anything Irish for that matter, with the exception of his three part-Irish children and his part-Irish wife), but he sure did prepare it well. So I called and he walked me through the steps for cooking it and we got off the phone pretty quickly because he had the flu and needed to rest.

And that was it. Four days later I got a call from my mom at 7:30 a.m. saying paramedics were at the house because Dad wasn’t breathing. Several minutes after that, another call saying he was gone. That was six years ago.

In the week leading up to the anniversary of my Dad’s death I decided to read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, a book about how she handled life after her husband died of a sudden, massive heart attack. I probably could have picked a better time to read that book. There were other choices on my Kindle that I could have read. A few classics. The latest from John Irving. Some book about a dog. But I didn’t choose any of those. There’s probably a reason for that. Most of the time I think about all of the memories I have of my dad. But this time of year, more than any other, I think about all that he’s missed, and all the things I’ll never get to say to him.

I think a lot about everything that has happened in the past 6 years that he would have enjoyed, or found funny, or been proud of. He would have been impressed with my used car buying skills– with how I walked out of the dealership just like he taught me and made the salesman conduct the final negotiations from the parking lot, where I sat in my car with the motor running until he gave me the price I wanted. In my retelling of the story, I would have left out the part that revealed the only reason I was at the dealership was to be secret shopper for the ad agency I was working for, and that I hadn’t intended to buy a car but found myself caught up in the moment.

Of course there are other things that I don’t mind him not knowing. Like that 2 out of 3 of his kids have been unceremoniously dismissed from their jobs in the past couple of months, and that these same two remain more or less directionless as far as career aspirations go. He also would not likely be impressed by the condition of my lawn or the fact that I only let my chili simmer for ten minutes before serving it.

There are days when I find myself lost in overwhelming sadness when I think about him. I’d like to say that those moments occur with less frequency now, but I’m not sure that’s true. I have gotten better about forgetting that he is dead, which is good because it can be awkward to back out of a conversation with someone that initially indicates that my dad is alive and well and available for, say, dental advice. I just got a new phone, my 4th one since he died, and for the first time I didn’t program his cell number into the address book. See, I am making progress.