As my dad was dying, my mom took care of him every single day. He was bedridden and she would change him, feed him, bathe him, massage his body when his muscles were sore. To me, that is true love. She took care of everything. I just had to pull my mom aside one day and tell her how amazing she is and how amazing it was to see her be that way with him. I said, “Mom, you are still in love with him.” And she just looked at me and said, “Yes, as much as always.”

My dad died of multiple myeloma, cellular cancer that invades your red and white blood cells. It’s treatable, but it’s not curable. I spent a lot of time with him when he was sick and I’m glad I was able to. I couldn’t stand seeing him spend his last days in a hospital bed at home surrounded by four stupid walls, so I rented a houseboat for five days where he could wake up in nature on the water every day. I wanted him to wake up and not see walls—just water, mountains, and blue sky. He deserved to smell the barbecue and have a fishing pole in his hands one last time, because fishing was my dad’s favorite pastime. My assistant Viggy* and I lifted him out of his bed and into his wheelchair, and rolled him out to the deck. We put his cowboy hat and some shades on him and there we were, fishing together one last time. He had the biggest smile on his face and I did too, even though inside I was crying because I knew, and so did he, that this was it. I felt lucky to have this time with him because I really didn’t see him enough when I was younger. I really didn’t see anybody but my bandmates from the time I was seventeen until I was thirty-eight. It was a gift to share my dad’s last days with him and tell each other all those things we didn’t say earlier in our lives.

Just before he died, I was with him, and tears start coming out of his eyes when he looks at me and says, “I’m not scared.” I start crying too, and he says, “I’ve got amazing kids. I’ve had an amazing life. I’m ready. Don’t worry about me, it’s okay. This is okay, I’m ready to go now. I love your mother and I’ve loved my life. I’m ready now.” We were crying together and I’ve never felt closer to someone and more heartbroken at the same time. He was also hallucinating from the medication he was on, so he was also talking to other people whom he was seeing. It was the most intense moment of my life.

My dad died at home, during the week of September 11, 2001. I’m sitting there in his room with him, just watching him die. On the television in the corner, I see the most insane act of terrorism in the history of mankind. I really wasn’t sure what was real anymore. How do you prepare to lose your only role model? How do you do it while the world is exploding? I had never seen so much death and I hope I never do again. My life was changing forever while the lives of everyone around me, around all of us, changed forever too. With that one act, that one event, those fucking assholes tore a hole in the world and changed everything as we know it. I kept thinking of how deaths come in threes. I sat there for a week, looking at my father and the television, thinking about the three bombs that had dropped on my life.

Dad,

We all miss you terribly, and Mom is so lonely without you. Don’t worry, I’m okay, Dad, because I feel like you’re watching me and with me all the time. I was sitting on the balcony writing lyrics last year and I knew you were there. A black crow landed just inches from me and started squawking at me. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t scared, he was just trying to talk to me. I sat there, staring at him, and I asked him if he was you. He stayed for a while and we talked, and in my soul I hoped it was you. Was that you, Dad?

I love you.

Thank you for just being you, Father.