{"quotes":[{"text":"If you love your dad, it’s tough when he dies. If you don’t like your dad, it’s tough when he dies. Because you lose that guy. Whatever you didn’t get, you miss. And what you did get, you miss.","author":"Jimmy Iovine","tags":["dad","death-of-a-parent","loss"],"id":8889,"author_id":"Jimmy+Iovine"},{"text":"Evan stares at me.I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. I’ve got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again.“You can’t go to Iraq anymore.”“I know.”He looks up at Deanna, then back to me. “Did you fight bad guys? You told me you weren’t.” His voice is suspicious, full of accusation. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him for that.“No, Evan. I didn’t fight bad guys.”I can’t bring myself to tell him the complete truth. I want so desperately to go back into this fight. I miss it every day. I always felt I could change the world with a rifle in my hands and our flag on my shoulder.“Did you get shot?” he looks me over, apparently searching for bullet wounds.I grin a little. “No, Bud, I didn’t get shot.”“People get shot in Iraq.”“Yes, they do.” It strikes me then that Evan for the first time has a grasp on the dangers that are faced over there. He’s six now, and the world is coming into focus for him.“People get shot, Daddy. They die. Bad guys kill them.”I think of Edward Iwan and Sean Sims.“Yeah, I know they do, Evan.","author":"David Bellavia","tags":["army","dad","death","die","fight","guns","iraq","military","soldiers","son","terrorism","war"],"id":12450,"author_id":"David+Bellavia"},{"text":"I walked out of his room sure I'd said the right thing maybe not as a father but as a Dad. I'd said the right thing, for once in my life.","author":"Steven Herrick","tags":["dad","father","for-once-in-my-life","say-the-right-thing"],"id":15390,"author_id":"Steven+Herrick"},{"text":"Parents expect only two things from their children, obedience in their childhood and respect in their adulthood.","author":"Amit Kalantri","tags":["adage","adulthood","advertisement","alliterations","amit-kalantri","amit-kalantri","amit-kalantri-writer","babies","blog","blogging","book-writing","caring-for-others","catch-lines","catchphrases","characters","child","childhood","children","creative-writing","dad","daddy","daughter","essay","family","father","growing-up","inspirational","knowledge","mom","mother","motivational","movie","movie-dialogue","mummy","novel-writing","obedience","parenthood","parenting","parents","philosophy","proverbs","public-speaking","punchline","quotes","respect","rhetoric","script","script-writing","scriptwriting","slogans","social-networking","son","speech","speechwriting","story","tag-lines","wisdom","wit","witty","writing"],"id":23847,"author_id":"Amit+Kalantri"},{"text":"Instructions for Dad.I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you.I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me.Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people.I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums.I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements.I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave.I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy).I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals.Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare.Music- 'Blackbird' by the Beatles. 'Plainsong' by The Cure. 'Live Like You Were Dying' by Tim McGraw. 'All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands' by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it).Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money.And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream.Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that.OK. That's it.I love you.Tessa xxx.","author":"Jenny Downham","tags":["before-i-die","dad","family","feelings","love","now-is-good","tessa-scott"],"id":26508,"author_id":"Jenny+Downham"},{"text":"Joshie has always told Post Human Services Staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were because every moment, our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day, we transfer into a different person, an utterly unfaithful iteration of our original selves, of the drooling kid in the sandbox. But not me. I am still a facsimile of my early childhood. I am still looking for a loving dad to lift me up and brush the sand off my ass and to hear English, calm and hurtless, fall off his lips.","author":"Gary Shteyngart","tags":["childhood","dad","diary","father","love","personality"],"id":26943,"author_id":"Gary+Shteyngart"},{"text":"I love you beyond paint, beyond melodies, beyond words. And I hope you will always feel that, even when I'm not around to tell you so.","author":"Kiera Cass","tags":["art","dad","kiera-cass","love","melody","paint","parent","picture","song","the-one","the-selection","words"],"id":28131,"author_id":"Kiera+Cass"},{"text":"Emma stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. Her thoughts went over every memorial, each picture, the families and children left behind. At this point it was a nightly routine. Some people counted sheep. Emma counted her father’s victims. One by one.","author":"Anais Torres","tags":["dad","daddy-issues","family-relationships","serial-killers","victim"],"id":33865,"author_id":"Anais+Torres"},{"text":"My dad once said... 'Some friends are like 'rubber wrappers'; they bind with you safely but get weaker when you stretch them too much'. Treat your friends with care, else the elasticity of their love for you may not go lasting!","author":"Israelmore Ayivor","tags":["bad-friends","care-for-friends","companions","comrade","comrades","dad","elastic","elasticity","father","fathers-day","food-for-thought","friends","friendship","good-friends","israelmore-ayivor","keep-good-friends","last","last-long","lasting","love","my-dad","my-father","overuse","respect-your-friends","rubber-wrappers","safe","stretch","treat","weaker"],"id":35554,"author_id":"Israelmore+Ayivor"},{"text":"Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["artist","child","children","crafting","creating","dad","family","father","father-s-day","mom","mother","mother-s-day","parent","parenting","raising-children","sacrifice"],"id":36023,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":114,"pages":12,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}