Forty‑Five Years of Ordinary Echoes

Grief never ends. But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love.

I woke up this morning with that familiar quiet weight in my chest — the one that only arrives on August 2. It’s softer now, gentler than it used to be. After forty‑five years, it doesn’t knock me off my feet or steal the air from my lungs. It’s more like a small stone I carry in my pocket. I don’t feel it every day, but every now and then my hand brushes against it, and the memory rises.

A few years ago, I wrote about how this day — Sunday, August 2, 1981 — was the worst day of my life. I was a teenager then, and the loss was so big it felt like the world had cracked open. Time didn’t heal it, not really. It just dulled the edges, turned the wound into a scar that aches on rainy days and in quiet moments when you look back and remember.

I still think about the alternate universe where my dad survived that first heart attack earlier in the week. Where he went to the doctor, got the help he needed, and lived long enough to see the life I built. Maybe he’d be 94 today. Maybe he’d still be here. Maybe he wouldn’t. But he would have lived a full life — and that thought alone brings a strange kind of comfort.

Even so, I’m grateful. I had seventeen years with him. Some people never get that. Some lose their fathers to distance, divorce, or absence long before death ever enters the picture. I had a dad who loved me, who shaped me, who left echoes that still show up in my life all these decades later.

And that’s what led to Ordinary Echoes.

One morning in 2025, I woke up thinking about him — not in a heavy way, but in that soft, unexpected way grief sometimes taps you on the shoulder. A line surfaced in my mind: “They say time can make it seem, like pain was never there at all…” And after so many years, it felt true. I didn’t think about his death every day anymore. Not even close. But little pieces of my daily life — a song, a smell, a quiet drive — could still bring him right back to the forefront of my mind.

That fascinated me. Those echoes. Those ordinary moments that suddenly weren’t ordinary at all.

So I wrote a song.

And when I listened to the completed version in my car a few days later, it hit me so hard I almost had to pull over. It wasn’t just a song. It was a conversation with the past. A tribute. A way of saying, “I remember. I still carry you. You’re still here.”

Today, on the 45th anniversary of his passing, I want to share it again — not out of sadness, but out of gratitude. Gratitude for the years I had with him. Gratitude for the echoes that still find me. Gratitude for the way music lets us hold onto the people we love.

If you’d like to listen, here it is:

🎧 Ordinary Echoes — YouTube

🎧 Streaming Platforms – Listen Here

Thank you for letting me share this part of my life again. Writing about him is still a kind of therapy — a way of keeping the connection alive. And on a day like today, that means everything.

Be blessed, and have a great day.