To My Superhero

To My Father Marshall up in Heaven,

Tomorrow will mark four years since you, my personal superman hung up his cape, and I can still remember like it was yesterday, the first time I met you.

I was six years old; I was so shy and scared of this world. I sat down at that dinner table, I was covered in mud from being outside and playing with the boys and I just starred at you. You looked at me and tried to engage but I was so withdrawn. I watched the way you looked at my mother, like she was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen. I watched as you ordered food for the table like you had angels working beside you. I remember how dapper you were dressed, like you were straight out of the Goodfella’s movie. I remember how elegant you were and the manners that you held. I was so intrigued with every part of you.

But, most of all, I remember at one point you looked so deeply into my eyes, and you didn’t look at me in the ways any other man has ever till this day looked at me. You looked at me in a way that made my soul feel safe in this world.

You became a light in a very dark chapter of my life.   

You were a new character in the Fairytale of Cass, and you brought something to my life that I had never experienced before, balance, safety, stability, and unconditional love.

The chapters that you and I shared for those twenty-three years of my life is one of the reasons I know that my soul chose to come into this world.

I remember just shortly after you and mom got married, I was in a horrible accident with mom and when they came to get me out of the car, I couldn’t stop screaming for you. I didn’t want anyone but you.

That moment sums up how my heart still feels on most days.

Sometimes I find myself on walks with magic with tears in my eyes thinking about how you sent him to me. How I know that you are walking right beside us making sure he keeps me in the beauty of life and never leaves me.

I love how I can close my eyes in the vastness of a forest or by the calm of a riverbed and still hear your voice through the trees and the ripples call me ‘honey.’

I remember after seeing the movie Evita you played “Don’t cry for me Argentina’ on the way home and had me sing the words to the piano music. You played it repeatedly and as terrible as I was singing it, you told me how amazing I was doing. You encouraged me, you empowered me and most importantly, you believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

The thing is dad, the older I get the more I understand the chapters of you.

I understand the depth of witnessing your elegance, your class, the little idiosyncrasies you had; like your fingers clenched together composing the piano music we listened to in the car because you really felt the frequency of it all. Your dedication to always being ‘better’, how you prided yourself on deep respect from others because that is what you gave to them, how you enjoyed the bounty of this life. How when you f^cked up you really tried your best to shift. How you always kept your word. Your simple and silly humor about real things that didn’t need to be so serious.

The older I get the more I realize just how much of an impact those chapters had on my life.

You were my perfect mirror. I see just how much I have gained from your presence in my Fairytale in just those twenty-three years. And I continuously come back to how grateful I am that I got to experience the character of you and the time we shared together within those pages.

One of the most amazing reflections I receive from other souls in this world is about how safe they feel with me.

It makes me wonder if part of that pureness within me comes from the evening you and I met.

I think I always subconsciously wanted others to be so intrigued with my presence because of the way I chose to conduct my life, so they too felt safe enough to be that in their own life.

I believe I’ve always wanted to be the light in another’s life because I know what your light did in my story.

Tonight, as I lie in bed writing this, with Danny Wright scoring this moment and the permission of tears gracing my face, I can’t help but to think about the weeks that led up to the day you departed physically from this human experience.

I was in Chicago for about three weeks on what felt like a nonstop inner rollercoaster. Waking up at five o’clock in the morning and coming over to the facility where you were so I could begin releasing your physical body to transition out of this world is something only you and I will ever understand the depth of.

I still sit up in bed occasionally and think about some of the moments you and I shared in that room.

Even though you couldn’t speak, you opened your heart to me about your entire life in those weeks, within those walls.

I sometimes feel into how surreal it was to be guided by God to do that for you.

And, then I think to myself about how that must have felt similarly to what it was like for you when you came into my mother and our lives.

You took on three children when you could have had any life you wanted, but you chose us.

You stepped into a role you didn’t need to, but I know looking back now that it was your mission because you helped all of us feel safer in this physical world.

I now know that my mission from God was to help you feel safer as you transitioned into the non-physical world.

<3

I remember as I stood above you shifting energy and releasing the walls around your heart how deeply you peered into my eyes as a newborn looking at his mother when he enters this world.

No one will ever understand the way you and I needed to show up in those moments. Not as father and daughter but as souls who understood the mission that we were both asked to fulfill.

I had so many times I would go into the bathroom and look into my eyes, wipe my tears, and come back to the present moment and remember why I was there.

I know many times I came back to the bed I saw tears in your eyes and through the years I have realized you were doing the same thing I was...

It was never easy for you or I to show up day in and day out and open our hearts to one another like that.

Sometimes I believe no one in our live has or will ever experience that kind of cosmic love we shared in those last moments.

I saw you, the entirety of you, the good and the bad, and I not only held space for it but I cherished it.

I could only imagine that is how you felt as you raised me.

I’ll never forget leaving that trip, I didn’t know if I’d ever get to see you again and I taped myself saying to the camera with our song playing in the background ‘This is a trip I will never forget and although my father isn’t opening his eyes to me, I know he loves me.” And, in that moment I saw in the reflection of the camera you open your eyes to look at me.

You hadn’t spoken in months, and you said you loved me.

God I am crying right now thinking about it.

I am crying because this life is so deep, so complex, so abstract and so full of moments that we have a conscious choice to really hold onto.

And, so many of mine have you intertwined within them dad.  

As I sat down on the plane heading back to Chicago from LA with the knowing that you only had days left –

I will never forget the visual of me writing in my journal ‘How do you watch superman hang up his cape?’

I will never forget grabbing my boom box out of my bag before I entered your room and Blake asking me what I was doing and saying, ‘would you want to open your eyes to the light or to the dark?” and barging into your room blasting music and dancing.

I will never forget the way you looked at me when I came in, you knew exactly what I was doing.

I will never forget spending that night in your room writing your eulogy while listening to your breath behind me. Knowing those were some of the last times I would hear them.

I will never forget waking up the next morning to the call from the nurse saying it was time.

I will never forget lying next to you in that hospital bed and telling you that I realized the key to life was ‘letting go.’

I will never forget the way you looked at me moments before you took your last breath.

I will never forget what your hands felt like.

I will never forget going into the bathroom afterwards crying wearing my nowlevelup shirt that said ‘the war is over’ and saying to myself ‘it’s okay Cass, he just went from one form into another, he is not gone, he is just out of pain.’

I will never forget years later when I found myself on my knees toppled over in a bathroom because I realized as your daughter, I never mourned the loss of my father, of my light, of my superhero.

I will never forget the brilliant creation of the character of YOU within my story.

Tonight, I smile knowing we chose to be in one another’s Fairytales for such a profound reason.

I know no one will ever really understand our love story.

But we will.

And that is what matters.

As I look up this evening from my computer I see you, sitting at the end of my bed smiling.

One day you and I will meet again and will sing and dance together.

For now, I love you dad

I will always remember the Fairytale of you.

Forever & Always

Your daughter,

Cass