Just when you think you’ve done all of the work and you will never cry about your father again, the truth is: you are two words, a scent, or a forgotten object away from the old stories pouring painfully out, and every time the tears come back it will be different than the others.

When you pull a leather belt from the closet, a single howl will escape your lips at the reminder of your young body bent over his knee, the leather wrapped around his muscled hand and the cold, calculated expression on his face.

When a phrase trips the memory of his words in a church class, "but what if you don't love your child?" the tears won't come until after the vomit has subsided and you are laying, broken, on the floor.

When you hear "schizophrenia" one giant teardrop will gently leak out of the corner of your eye as you frantically search for a hiding place.

At a bar in the desert, hearing "Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you" will rip your heart to shreds. You won't cry out loud and you won't finish the whiskey and you'll take the long way home with your face turned up to the stars.

When you are told that as a young man he made dandelion wine, it will take you back to the ranch house he grew up in, his brothers around a fire pit, laughing, venison, fishing poles, the smell of manure, butchered rabbits, and you will cry the wracking, painful sobs of a lost child.

And when, after all these years, the thought springs up, unbidden, from the dust of your mind, "I love my father", you will cry in anger mixed with both beauty and pain. You'll continue your walk through the forest, naming every tree and flower the way he taught you when you were little, because that's the last time you can remember thinking those words, "I love my daddy."

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