Dad

Today, March 30, is the first anniversary of my dad’s death—the death that made me an orphan, and an executor. The death that led directly to this website. The death that turned me into a death and dying educator and activist. Let me tell you a little about him.

I guess I was sleepy.

Daniel Robison was born in northern Illinois and spent most of his childhood there, except for a few years in Oklahoma City. As far as I can tell from pictures, he had the most 1950s/early 1960s childhood that ever midcenturied. Have you watched Mad Men? My dad was a year older than Sally Draper’s character would have been, and the family photos of my dad and his sisters look just like the show—assuming you moved it to this midwest, and it were about the dairy industry instead of advertising.

My dad was an athletic kid, but he ended up going to college at University of Illinois for architecture. While he was getting his masters degree, he lived in San Francisco for a while, and he allegedly watched Jim Jones preaching on the street one day. Fortunately, he did not drink the Kool-Aid, literally or metaphorically. (Yes, I know it was actually Flavor Aid at Jonestown.)

I can’t imagine my dad following any preacher or religion. He was too brutally independent for that. He only wanted to do things his own way, never wanted any help. I remember once when I was about 11, he was finishing the basement in our home, and I found him downstairs struggling to hold up an entire slab of drywall on his own. I don’t know what he would’ve done if I hadn’t come down there.

I still think it’s the coolest thing ever that my dad was an architect. The fact that I can enter buildings my dad drew on a sheet of paper? Astounding. He mostly worked on municipal projects, but he also designed the house where I grew up. My childhood bedroom was designed specifically for me, as a person. Who gets that kind of luxury?

I’m obviously biased, but I also think he was a good architect. He loved windows, and now I do, too. I can’t stand to spend too much time in places without natural light. Like my mom, he started his own business. A pair of workhorses, those two—though the amount of work they put in sometimes blinded them to how lucky they were.

Dad and I disagreed about politics entirely. He always called me a communist, which made me laugh. He sort of got Fox News brainwashed toward the end of his life? But like his brush with Jim Jones, he wasn’t committed to it in the way some people are. He never voted for Trump, thank goodness. I don’t know what I would have done.

He had a temper, but he only yelled at inanimate objects, never at people. Sometimes I find myself doing the same thing, but I can’t muster his level of fury. He had the world’s sappiest taste in music. When I was cleaning out his bedside table, I found a list of songs he’d written on a napkin—we think he might have wanted my sister to cover them. I made a playlist if you’re interested.

He liked to watch war movies and westerns—and, hilariously, the Hallmark Channel. He liked to golf and hunt and fish. He liked to drink Tanqueray and tonics.

When I moved to Louisville, he would come visit to do projects on my house. The man loved a project, and I loved the free help. But his pancreatic cancer diagnosis came only a few months after I moved, and he lived for only 9 months after that. Now who’s supposed to help me build a retaining wall? Rude, honestly.

He definitely thought he was going to beat cancer out of spite, but that’s not how science works. I wish it did work that way, because my dad had spite in spades.

Now he lives in the most architectural urn we could find, sitting next to my mom’s urn in Wisconsin. Both of those urns are next to their beloved dogs’ urns. A whole little urn family.

In some ways it does feel like a year since his death, and in other ways it feels like it’s only been a few weeks. One of the hardest things about being named executor is that you don’t have much time or space to grieve. Not that I haven’t been grieving, but my grieving has been prolonged, tucked into whatever safe spaces I can find. I cry at concerts a lot.

I wish I could tell him about my book deal. If he had lived, there wouldn’t have been a book deal—or at least not this book deal. He would love that I’m capitalizing off his death. That’s the American Dream at work.

Pancreatic cancer sucks. If you want to donate in his memory, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is a good organization. But things are tough all over, so if you don’t have money to spare, consider listening to The Eagles or ABBA instead. Suffer through The Bridge on the River Kwai. Hit some balls at the driving range. It’s a beautiful spring this year.