It’s been thirty years since my father died of prostate cancer. From the distance of years, I catch myself wondering if my dad is just a story I tell myself. But then I have the comforting reminder that he lives on in so much of who I am and what I do. It is, for instance, my father and his death that prompted some of the work I do now and is a good portion of why I believe in its importance.

A year before my father died, shortly before I was to return to England, where I lived at the time, he and I sat on my parents’ deck in Marion, Massachusetts, overlooking the harbor bathed in a late summer light. There, my dad, looking remarkably well for someone whose cancer had metastasized into his bones, told me everything a child wants to hear from their parent–that he loved me and was proud of me. These were things I knew, but had never heard him say so directly, with such deliberateness. A few months later a letter arrived to me in England in which he expanded on his feelings about me. And though I would see him again, it proved to be his goodbye.

When I returned to the States the next summer, I was shocked to see the frail, very sick man who had replaced my energetic dad. It was then that I began my letter to him. The letter –as you can imagine–was hard to write. And it was the first piece of writing this English major ever truly revised. Writing the letter helped me face the fact that not only would my dad die but he needed to die to in order to relieve his suffering. It also helped to ease our incomprehensible farewell when I again left for England later that summer of 1992, my father still alive but wanting me to go, to get on with my life instead keeping vigil by his deathbed.

From time to time, I take these exchange of letters out of my fire safe and reread them. I’m thankful, of course, to still have my dad’s words to me. But I am also thankful to have the words of my twenty-seven-year-old self, telling me now what my dad meant to me then, reminding me at fifty-nine that my father is, indeed, not just a story I tell myself.

Writing, my father showed me is vital–it’s the opportunity to say what should be said while there’s still time. It’s a means of figuring out what we think and feel; a way of processing our experiences and feelings. It’s a chance to heal. And as a record of our lives, it helps us take a measure of what’s lost, what remains, and what ultimately matters.