The Wayward Arizonan

Fourteen years. Five thousand one hundred thirteen days. Whoever said that “Time heals all wounds” was a damned liar. It turns out that time only makes me realize how much I’ve really lost.  The problem is that I didn’t just lose my father; my sisters lost, my little brother lost;,my Mother lost. My Dad was more than just my Dad; at the moment of his death he was a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an uncle and a friend.  So many titles and each of them important in their special way. We all lost someone that Friday morning.

I can remember exactly what I was doing that day. I remember sitting in my desk chair in my dorm room, I was strumming my acoustic guitar to the sounds of Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” (I still can’t listen to or play that song anymore). My brother-in-law, Chris knocked on my door and walked in. I still don’t know how he managed to tell me the news, I was absolutely shocked. I don’t even remember how I reacted, I was in complete disbelief. After all, I had just talked to my Dad the Wednesday before. We had talked about school and guns, I felt like we had turned a corner in our relationship.

My sister, nephew and brother-in-law drove to Sierra Vista that afternoon. I was in a daze for the entire drive, and everything for the next few weeks is blurry. I remember a lot of tears and hugs, there were even some unwanted visitors during a time I really just needed to be alone.

In the fourteen years since I have married my high school sweetheart. I have joined and left the U.S. Navy. I have become a father myself. I’ve made mistakes and had some successes, all the while wishing my father was around to talk to. I need to talk to him, I have so many questions that go unanswered. I can’t count the times I’ve pulled to the side of the road in tears because a quintessentially “Dad song” queued up on my iPod. I realize that I am rapidly approaching the day in which he will have been gone longer than I was with him, and I don’t know how I will handle it. I suppose I will do what I’ve been doing since Oct 9th 1998, I guess I will just have to continue on with the knowledge that some day, some day I can hug my Dad again and tell him that I love him.

Daniel Lloyd Isbell, you are missed.