It still feels like yesterday.

The weather had started to shift. It had been a beautiful, warm fall day. The perfect kind of day to ride your motorcycle to work.

My day at work had been good. I remember laughing at something as the office phone rang. My boss answered it and then told me someone was calling for me.

I had no idea that when I picked up that phone, my life would be forever changed.

It was your best friend’s wife.

Even then, it didn’t register.

Then I heard the words that have played over and over in my mind for 17 years.

“There’s been an accident.”

No one had called Mom. They were worried about how she would react. She was fragile. She might have a seizure.

So I had to tell her.

I drove an hour to give my mother the news, then turned around and drove another hour back to the hospital, knowing somewhere inside of me that I was going there to be told what I already knew.

At first, they were going to life-flight you to another hospital. But while I was driving to Mom, somewhere without cell service, a voicemail was left on my phone.

They were taking you to the local hospital instead.

Something inside me already knew.

By the time we arrived, several of the guys you worked with were there. The ones you called your brothers. My boss and her husband were there. My best friend was there.

They ushered all of us into a small room.

Then the doctor and the coroner walked in.

You were gone.

My knees buckled, and I hit the floor.

I was 33 years old, and I had never once envisioned a life that did not have you in it. Suddenly, in that room, I had to grow up.

Really grow up.

There were phone calls to make. Arrangements to handle. Decisions that had to be made while your wife, my mother, grieved and took center stage.

The person I had been before that phone rang ceased to exist that day.

Who emerged from it is someone I still don’t recognize most days.

You made me promise that I would take care of her. I did, but there were times I resented you for asking it of me. I had to suppress so much of my own grief because she was the widow. She was the one who had lost her husband.

You were merely my father.

As though somehow that made losing you hurt less.

As though being your daughter meant my grief should take up less space.

Seventeen years have passed since the night I drove out to the place where it happened. The place where your life ended and mine divided permanently into before and after. The place where I realized I would have to learn to be my own strength, or at least learn how to pretend I was. Because the person I had always leaned into when I needed to be strong was suddenly the person I was grieving.

And somehow, I am still here.

Still pretending I am strong.

Still pretending I am okay.

When sometimes all I really want is to call you one more time.

I want to hear your voice.

I want one more conversation.

One more laugh.

One more chance to tell you something I accomplished and hear whatever smart-ass response you would have given me.

And God, I would give almost anything for one more ride on the back of your bike.

I haven’t been on another motorcycle since.

I’m not sure I ever will.

I hope, wherever you are, you have been able to see who I became during these 17 years. I hope you have seen the things I accomplished that you never got to see. I hope you have seen me stumble, get back up, change directions, start over, and keep going.

There are still things I haven’t done yet.

But I will.

You missed so much that you wanted to see me accomplish, Dad.

Sometimes I wish I could have just five minutes to tell you all of it.

To tell you who your daughter became.

Although, knowing you, maybe you already know.

Because after all these years, after everything that has changed and everything I have lost, there is one thing I know with absolute certainty.

I am your daughter through and through.

And there has not been a single day in these 17 years that I haven’t missed you.

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