It was a snowstorm-y night a day or two before my 20th birthday, and I went to visit him after work. (I worked in a chi-chi women's clothing store in those days.) He lived about six or seven miles from me, and the easiest way to get there was taking this back road. So, I'm driving along in the snowstorm, and about a mile and a half away from home ... oh, yes. A couple 360-degree spins into telephone pole.

It was poetic. I laughed upon impact, and then I started screaming, because how the hell was I going to explain to Mother why I was coming home that way when I told her I was going to be doing something else that wouldn't have involved coming home from Dyer?

Luckily, the friends I said I was going to be with lived in Illinois, which you could conceivably get to from the road I was on, so I made up some cockamamie excuse as to how we went someplace out that way -- but not before Dad getting in my car and going over the story with me so we'd both have it straight. How's THAT for a cool dad?

Another time, I played said boyfriend on the phone because Mother didn't want me seeing him anymore, so Dad volunteered to be the one to tell him/me. There were millions of times like that.

-- Written June 3, 2004

I suppose if we're going to talk about him for a whole month, I should introduce you to him, right? Let's start off with the basics:

My dad is Lee R. Quinn, born June 30, 1934 somewhere in Chicago, to Marie and Raymond Quinn. Two sisters, Eileen (Jim) Beil and Bernice (Ron) Ireton, both still living. Scads of nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews. Graduated Dyer Central High School in 1952; futzed around a year or two before enlisting in the Army, 101st Airborne. Got out in 1957 and started college at Indiana University, majoring in education. Met Anna Jean Matura circa 1960; married her June 15, 1963; graduated from IU with a master's degree in English education in 1967, I believe, after doing his student teaching at East Chicago ... Roosevelt, if memory serves me right.

Started teaching at Dyer Central in Dyer, Ind., which moved and turned into Lake Central High School in St. John, Ind., where he taught for 21 years. He taught all levels of high school English, but had the most passion (and best result) with the "developmental" seniors, or what we would call "LD" today. Adopted his only daughter in September, 1970. (That'd be me, yo.) Was one of the most popular teachers to walk Lake Central's halls. (Ask anyone. They'll tell you.)

Retired from teaching in 1985 to try his hand at selling insurance, which he did part time for years. Failed at it and eventually got back into teaching freshman composition around 1992, first at Indiana College of Commerce (a court-reporting school), then at alma mater Indiana University (Northwest) and finally IVY Tech State College. Loved fishing, hunting and anything wilderness-related. Loved to read, draw and, sometimes, write. Was quiet and preferred living in his own head. Loved Tim O'Brien novels.

Died Aug. 30, 2001 after a six-month battle with aggressive non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He was 67.

--Written June 1, 2004

The night before was a Sunday; at that point, he was two days in to the first (and only) chemo he would receive to treat the cancer in his spinal chord. It didn't work -- Mother and I had spent the better part of the week before fighting over whether he should even have it, because she wanted no heroic measures at all, while I wanted to give Dad one last chance because it just seemed horrifyingly cruel that the man couldn't swallow; and the doctor I consulted with felt that by giving chemo directly into the spinal chord, it could conceivably buy him another six to nine months. (That doesn't mean she wanted him dead, so don't jump on the "Hate Mother" wagon just yet. It's more complicated than that.) So anyway, he was almost completely comatose, and I was waiting for a consultation with the gastro doctor to see whether we would be putting in a feeding tube, because at that point, he would be transferred to a nursing home while he was receiving chemo to get his strength back up, etc. Well, when the doctor came in, he looked at Dad and the charts and said that while he's done many feeding tube surgeries on patients in as bad a condition as Dad, he couldn't guarantee that a) Dad would even make it out of surgery and b) that it would be a successful endeavor overall. He said to think it over and talk with Mother about what we would do, and if we decided at the 11 hour that we wouldn't do the surgery, it wouldn't be a problem.

We didn't get to make the choice. I was driving to the hospital around 9:30-ish when I got the call from Pam, Dad's favorite nurse on the oncology ward: He'd gone into Cheyne-Stokes respiration. Surgery wouldn't be a good idea, but Hospice would be.

Stupid good actors and their ability to have even the most emotionally retarded sobbing like fools. And I can tell you the three parts that really did it to me:

1) The one where Bessie (Diane Keaton) tells Lee (Streep) about her lost love drowning at a carnie picnic (made me think of how my sister and me are not even polite to each other);
2) The one where Bessie finds out the kids aren't bone marrow matches, and the thought that Lee has to give up or alter her dreams in some way hits her square in the jaw; and
3) The very end, where Bessie's sitting on the bed with her pudding-headed father, manipulating sunbeams around the room with a mirror.

Then, as if it couldn't get more dramatic around Chez Broad, I decided to head out and find the one guy, and while I was driving along Rte. 51, what should should come on the radio but "Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys. For the love of GOD, people. And I didn't even have any wipe-y rags in The Pimp.

Have I ever mentioned that I get really weepy when I'm sick, too?

So now that there are only two days left in June, I've decided that Project Dad has been a marginal success in that I didn't do what I said I was going to, which was write everyday about him. Laziness is the likely culprit as to why, and for that I'm sorry. Then again, I'm not sure Dad's particularly let down by it, because he knows me, and he knows that I tend to get all apeshit about things, only to lose momentum at some point along the way. At least, I hope he isn't, anyway. Perhaps I'll just extend my tribute until Aug. 30, the day he died, with the understanding that I won't be writing about him every day.

In the meantime, the story I was all geeked up about? DID in fact pan out, but I didn't write it for today because there's a couple more phone calls I'll need to make tomorrow. But it'll happen. Iss ALL good.

Mer and I had planned, in honor of her waiting for her divorce to finalize, to hit a Greek/Serbian/Macedonian party in Chicago while she was here, and that Sunday there was one at Excalibur, this bar that I don't know HOW it survived past '92, maybe. But anyway, we go, and hilarity ensues of course, since Mer was on the hunt to nail an Eastern European hottie. As we were leaving, I ran into my friend Sammy and her friend, while Mer, totally shitcanned, was busy picking up this dude named Zoran from Lincolnshire, who I think she blew in the parking lot. So Sammy, her friend and I, after we almost got killed by our cab driver while picking up my car from the pound in a scummy neighborhood because it got towed (from August 13 to September 30, the snowball got towed three -- count 'em THREE -- different times, and that was number two), went back to Sammy's crib so I could get some bandaids for my feet and she could change. Her friend didn't know about Dad dying, so while Sammy was changing, I told her all about the cancer and the three weeks it took to kill him, blada blada blada.

If there was one thing Dad hated more than anything ever, it was talking about illness period, but his illness? He better not have caught you talking about it with anyone, because you'd be getting some serious hairy eyeball from him. He never even told his students how ill he was, even though it wasn't like they didn't notice he'd lost what was left of his hair and eyebrows. He always told them his plumbing was bad.

So. I'd put my purse on Sammy's desk in the living room, and I was telling her friend about the eeeevils of cancer when all of a sudden, my purse fell to the ground. It wasn't particularly near the edge of the desk, nor did either of Sammy's cats walk past it or under the desk to knock it over. It. just. fell. And no one will ever convince me that that wasn't Dad's out-there-somewhere-beyond-the-ether version of the hairy eyeball.

I used to own part of a season ticket to the Cubs -- since I didn't get to go to many games last year, I relinquished my portion to my former boss -- and that particular year, she had tickets for the Father's Day game. At the time, her daughter was still wee, plus she's the coolest former boss in the universe, so she either gave those tickets or traded me for another day or something. Anyway, I asked Dad to go, and he was like, "All right. Excellent."

Dad hated my driving, so we took the South Shore into Chicago and then rode the Red Line, is it? Or maybe the Brown, I can't remember, but it was his first time on mass transit in the Big City. It was also cheaper, since I was near broke that weekend and he didn't have any summer school classes, so he was pretty broke, too. But we got there and took our seats in the way upper deck, which is tough to get up to if you're in remission for cancer or grossly out of shape like me. Anyway, we sit down and order a couple of dogs and a couple of beers, and Dad said, "You know, this is the first beer I've had since before my chemo," to which I replied, "Well, I'm not carrying you down if you get loaded." He grinned.

I can't remember if the Cubs won that day or not, but I do remember the L ride back to our stop, or what I thought was our stop: Anyone who knows me even a little knows that my sense of direction isn't so good most of the time, and there we were, walking along Washington trying to get back to Michigan Avenue. We finally ended up taking a cab, for which almost didn't have enough money between the two of us to get, and we barely made our train back into Hammond. Needless to say, Dad was irritated at my spaciness, but I didn't realize that, after what was a long, long day for him, he was exhausted and not just a little bit in pain. Still, after seeing my gas tank nearly on empty when I drove him home, he called me 15 minutes later to a) ask if I had gas to get home and b) to tell me he had a great time and to thank me once again for a great Father's Day.

Twenty-seven days after that, we would find out the lymphoma got in his spinal cord. It would eventually blind him and paralyze his throat so he couldn't eat.

But in the picture taken from that June 16 on my message board, he has that grin. He looks a little thin, and you can tell he's lost most of his hair, but the grin is very much there. It's the last picture ever taken of him.

I remember being in the same situation with Corolla #1 (aka Bluebell). I was getting ready to move out, and I'd had Bluebell paid off for about six months. The thing was, with 177,758 miles on it and struts that needed repair -- not to mention the fact that, over New Year's that year I dropped more than $900 in repairs on it -- the chances of it being reliable for me to keep were slim to none, and if I were going to get a new ride, it would probably be better for me to have it in the budget than to have to add it in once I was in the crib. Adding fuel to the fire, I received a coupon from the Toyota dealer we always dealt with offering a good deal on vehicles. So I told Dad I was going to look, and he told me, "Now, make sure you just LOOK -- no test driving, nothing like that. We're just getting an idea of what's out there. Ok?" Sure Dad, I said. I doubted I was going to like anything, anyway.

Then I saw a '95 Corolla with a moon roof (since I'd just broken up with a dude that had a convertible, that was HUGE) and 25,200 miles on it. I brought it home.

First thing Dad said was, "What'd I tell you?" to which I replied, "But Dad, look," and pointed to the odometer with its eensy little miles on it. "NOW you're talkin'," said Dad, proud that I'd picked something cute AND practical. He threw on a shirt and went back to the dealership with me that night to get the rest of the shit done.

That was the last time Dad and I got to buy a car together. On second thought, I AM going to hate giving it up if and when I have to.

Labor Day weekend, 2001: Dad was pretty much comatose by the Monday before, so we had hospice set up him at home; he sure as hell didn't want to be in the hospital any longer than necessary, anyway. So we knew it was an any-moment deal, and I told Mer that, to which she offered to cancel the trip. I wouldn't hear of it, though, because I might not have known when Dad was going to die, but I did know that I was going to need someone to lighten my psychic load when it happened.

Fast forward to that Thursday: Dad had pretty much lost consciousness, and his temperature was starting to rise, which apparently is one of the final signs that the end is nigh. I'd brought Rube over to see him -- they totally loved each other -- and I picked up my young cousin (Crazy Aunt's daughter, 14 at the time) to see him, too. But signs not necessarily being indicative of anything concrete, my young cousin and I took off for O'Hare to pick Mer up from her 7:30 flight, thinking that Dad was in a holding pattern and that it was going to be smooth sailing to the airport.

Except it wasn't, because traffic was backed up at the Spaghetti Bowl, which is at least 20 miles from the airport. And I should probably mention that I didn't tell my crazy aunt that I was taking her child with me, because that'll be important later.

So after fielding a frantic call from Mer wondering where I was and trying to put off the wrath of my crazy aunt for hijacking her daughter to another state (!), we found Mer in the bar. We hugged, I told her how awesome she looked because she did, she told me I hadn't changed one bit, and we started heading for the car. But as we headed for the car, the weather turned wicked and started torrentially pouring -- lightining, thunder, the works. And as were walking through the torrential pouring and lightning and thunder, we realize that we can't find the damn car. "You know, this is right out of a Seinfeld episode, (Broad)," said Mer, to which I replied, "Right. All I need now is to get the call from Ma that Dad died ..."

Now, I'm sure y'all are going to be like, "No WAY! That totally didn't happen!" and I wouldn't have believed it either if didn't happen to me, but no sooner did that come out of my mouth, damned if that phone didn't ring with Mother hysterical on the other end.

Standing there in the torrential pouring drenched through to the bone, I lost it for a few moments, then I called my one best friend to start making the phone calls to all my other friends. Oh, and no, we hadn't found the car yet, so we walked around awhile longer trying to find it. At that point I was about as useless as tits on bull, so we had to call security, who, after 20 minutes of driving us around FINALLY got us to the vehicle. (I won't even go into the nightmare that was, and how he wanted me to fill out a customer service card about his service.) So we finally get out of the parking garage about 10:15-ish, only to discover that the pouring had been so torrential, it flooded the underpass to get out of the airport.

Now, say what you want about souls and the afterlife and whatever, but I firmly believe that, realizing his one and only daughter has a habit of getting herself into fucked-up adventures such as this, he put off going to heaven to make sure the Corolla (the '95 one, not the old one) and I, along with my passengers, made it through the torrential pouring before the airport people shut down the airport, which they did about 10 minutes after we got out.

We went straight to my parents, where two of my aunts, an uncle, a cousin and a hospice nurse were waiting for me to get there so they could call the ambulance to take Dad to the funeral home. The first thing out of my mouth when I saw him? "He looks like a fucking concentration camp victim!" as I burst into tears. Mer, in the meantime, was standing there, embarrassed as fuck, wondering if she should stay or not. I begged her to, because like I've said before, if it weren't for her, I would've been a complete and utter disaster. Oh, and my one aunt and uncle took my young cousin home, but not after my crazy aunt thoroughly tore me a new one for, again, hijacking her daughter out of state. To Illinois. She was pissed off enough at me that she didn't come to Dad's wake, although I think she'd also just had surgery on her foot or something.

It probably doesn't sound like a very funny story, but looking back on it now, I could see Dad standing there, shaking his head: "Yep, this could only happen to you." And you'd realize just how funny it actually was.