My Dad got shot in the line of duty as a canine cop back in 1981. It’s one of those events that everyone recalls, but nobody remembers accurately. We finally found the article that ran in the local newspaper at the time.

In chapter 3 I talk with my Mom’s best friend from her “party era”, Candy. This was after a difficult childhood and an abusive first marriage, when Mom returned to Seattle and finally had the chance to assert her independence. She was radiant in every photo from this era.

I never knew my parents back in the “before” years - before kids, before the shooting, before the tragic years that stole them away from me. But this photo depicts the silly, fun times they used to tell me about, that I got to hear about from their friends, in the early seventies. My mom’s photo here, as my Dad works away on the car, makes me want to have a good laugh with both of them. I wish we could.

In chapter 3, Aunt Julie describes the grandmother I never knew: Virginia (or Mike). She thought my Aunt Bonnie had this made, but once I finally got to see this picture of it I realized that my mother must have commissioned it. The calligraphy looks like something her friend Barb (also heard in Chapter 3) would have done.

In Chapter 4, my Dad’s former girlfriend Ronni and I exchange some sad but loving words about him. We both agree that if he were still here, if we had one more chance to see each other, he would say “do you want to go out on the boat?”

He loved the water and seafood. He found a lot of peace (when he was able) in catching Dungeness in the Pacific, just off Coos Bay, OR.

When my Mom died, we found some letters in her files that we had never seen before. This one came packed into an old envelope, with a cover note from Bud saying “these are some things I found in your mother’s things. I thought maybe you would want to have these. Love, Dad.”

The letter is from Virginias adoptive parents, the Benders, dated February 17, 1944. One day after mom was born. It’s a nice reminder of the love we came from, even with the pain it carried with it.

In Chapter 4, my sister Jenn and I talk for the first time about the challenges of our different experiences in high school, when our parents split up. We recall this letter we found, after our Mom died, that she had sent to me when I graduated in 2000. It is a great display of the way our friendship and our bond carried us through all of our pain - and continues to do so to this day,