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When I was about 5 years old, my dad leapt off of a playground swing just as it hit peak height. Never mind that he sprained his ankle or that he couldn’t care for me and my sister (who’d gone to live with relatives in his absence) or that he was likely a little buzzed at the time. What stuck with me from that moment was his unadulterated joy.

As a young girl, I thought my dad was the funniest, smartest, most handsome man in the world. He was laughter and silliness, full of cartoonish appeal with bushy black eyebrows and a crooked grin beneath his mustache. An excellent Donald Duck impersonator, we spent gleeful moments quacking at each other across the dinner table. My dad was a talented musician who could play any instrument you handed him, a terrible gift giver who did his Christmas shopping in the seasonal aisle at Walgreens and the kind of person who saved junk mail catalogs just in case you might like to look at them. He had many wonderful and endearing qualities, but he was a complicated man. He was an alcoholic and carried a depth of grief, shame and anger that often made him hide the best parts of himself.

Still, I recall moments of laughter. I remember feeling awe and pride when he recounted the memories of a young musician roaming the streets of San Francisco or the time he took off for Mexico with friends after high school. I admired how he would run into the wind and the ease with which he lived in those stories.

But maybe they weren’t.

A couple of days after he passed, I had a medical appointment for a depression treatment I’d been undergoing. The treatment, involving a strong psychoactive drug, had induced profound insights before, but I wasn’t expecting what happened that day in June. Surrounded by my carefully chosen comfort items — a plush starfish, the familiar weight of my blanket, the tang of sour candies to mask the medicine’s bitter taste — I closed my eyes, bracing for the familiar hum of disconnected thoughts. I was used to the unpredictable journey of the treatment, but I was unprepared for where it would lead me that day. As tears soaked my satin eye mask, a vision emerged from the darkness — and there he was.

Only, it wasn’t the frail and tired-looking man I had seen in the hospital months before. It wasn’t the dark-haired, mustached man of my childhood or the cool musician wearing denim, shades and a felt hat from his old band photos. Though I instantly recognized the smiling toddler on a sandy beach — dimples, a mop of dark hair and sparkling hazel eyes — it was a version of my father I had never known. Then I was there, too, a toddler myself, sitting in the sand with my father and delighting as he stomped the castle he had just built back into the sand with chubby feet. His eyes met mine with a look of wild, chaotic glee. Together we jumped and played, sharing the joy of the reckless, carefree moment.

About two weeks later, as I stood at a funeral home lectern in front of a room full of family and friends in Omaha, Nebraska, I shared this story about meeting my father’s inner child:

“That vivid memory, even if only a product of my active imagination and the help of psychotropic drugs, is what I choose to hold in my mind today as I remember who my father was. He was not by any means a perfect father, husband, brother, son or friend. But for all the mistakes he made and demons he fought, he had a spirit that delighted in making others laugh, an adventurous streak and a penchant for silliness that could be as endearing as it was embarrassing.”

I asked my siblings, relatives and friends that day to remember my father for the childlike way that he lived and loved. Today, that is what I strive to do, even as I sit with my ever-changing grief.

When I appreciate art, connect deeply with a new friend or share beautiful stories, I keep the memory of his joy alive. When I embark on a new adventure, lean into my intuition without a backup plan or find myself laughing so hard it hurts my ribs, I know it’s him — that beautiful, enigmatic man I called Dad — living out his legacy through my own palpable, untamed joy.

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