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This isn't my first birthday without my father, but I find it's the birthday he's on my mind the most.

I spent the last 2 years living at home with my mother and siblings while I finished grad school and searched for full time work. It's given me time to see the full impact his death has had on my family... and on me. We've all dealt with it in different ways. Some of us keep his memory alive by telling stories of him whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some of us sleep in his shirts. Some of us go to more church services, say more prayers, work more hours, stay busy.

I'm sure, wherever he is, my father appreciates all the personal memorials and prayers and getting on with life, but one thing I know he would love is if we all spent more time together on purpose. Taking people for granted--especially the people you love and have loved and live with--in today's fast paced society has grown uncomfortably easy, and we all need our alone time to relax, to regroup, to come back to life, but I've begun to wonder how much of the alone time is strictly necessary.

My father was certainly a busy man. He worked full time, parented the six children he had, and coached youth softball teams. Additionally, he'd occasionally spend several weekends helping his mother and siblings with home repairs when needed. Yet, he always made time for us, whether it was a surprise lunch at Denny's on the way home from the grocery store, a family movie night, or a milkshake run while we rode with him to run errands. My siblings and I weren't always the most patient kids--with him or with each other. We'd often bicker in the backseat or hassle him in the stores to quit chatting with whichever cashier or clerk or neighbor he'd got into a conversation with so we could be on our way.

Yet, based on my fathers efforts, his sense of humor, his smile, which I have frozen behind my eyes forever, I know that those trips to the grocery store, the post office, the softball field (with myriad stops along the way for milkshakes, of course) were still some of the happiest times of his life.

I'm celebrating my birthday this year by taking a road trip with my mother to visit my Aunt Linda and her family in West Virginia. In the past, it's been very easy to fade into the background and noise of my own thoughts on such trips (and in general; I can be a spacey motherfucker), but if nothing else, with my ultra gregarious father with us in spirit (dude was a saggitarius; need I say more?), at the very least, I will be more present. I will listen. I will laugh more. I will love more, and even in the silence, when I feel the full weight of his absence on this physical plane, I will engage it. I will smile and tell my mother about the time he got into a conversation with the postman outside of Saint Ursula's Catholic Church for a good 10 minutes while Rob and I waited in the car, begging to go to McDonalds, as promised. I will listen to my mother tell me about the time he misheard her over the phone say "give me a moment" as "give me an annulment." We will trade stories and we will pray we get to see him again in one form or another.

We will laugh and we will cry, and we will do it together.