Sacramento, CA--This month marks the fourth year of my father’s death. Dad was so caught up in the day-to-day particulars of his suburban North Sac life and as a caregiver to my Mother, I think at times he actually forgot to enjoy it.

The day after he passed, I was searching his home office, drowning in grief and looking for something (anything) to comfort me. I spied Dad’s small spiral bound note pad with his pen resting at a jaunty angle on top of the page. There was a long "To Do" list scribbled in ink—bills to pay, errands to run, and fix-it projects around the house. Just five days prior, he had renewed his October subscription to National Geographic and his AARP membership.

At 83, battling throat cancer and a nursing a patched up heart, he was still heavily invested in living life and planning for his future.

Then, it hit me like a sledgehammer: None of those things on the note pad mattered anymore. Poof! The laundry list of projects vanished the moment his soul took flight. At precisely which point did I understand that it didn’t really matter how many minutes it took to water the lawn, or how much chlorine the pool required, or which day to pick up his prescription? Gone, in an instant. No more lists for Dad.

Hours later, still glued to his office chair while watching storm clouds gathering at dusk, I lightly traced his spidery script with my fingertips, and felt the loss of all those little, sometimes inconsequential things we take for granted. But in the final analysis, those mundane projects had mattered a great deal to him—they were the detailed notes of a life in the process of living, of running to the grocery store for eggs and orange juice, paying monthly bills, or remembering to send a birthday card to one of his four daughters.

I kept that list—buried in the back of my office filing cabinet. Occasionally, I’ll run across it, and immediately touch the paper, trying to re-connect with someone whom I had a complicated and often turbulent relationship.

Farewell, Dad, you are fondly remembered–and, by the way, I keep detailed daily "To Do" lists too.