My Dad's Dahlias

The flower that will always remind me of him

I know I’ve been vaguely alluding to something all along these last few months, and—I know— I hate when people do that, too, but sometimes when you yourself don’t really know what is happening, alluding is all you can do. I said that a dear family member was sick, and it was my dad. We’d known that he was sick for a few months, but the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, and by the time they gave him his pancreatic cancer diagnosis it was too late, because pancreatic cancer is the worst.

Pancreatic cancer can also be ruthlessly quick. In March or April my dad began feeling constantly tired, and then he began to cough all the time, and soon he had trouble breathing on his own, which was strange for a person who had been a road cyclist for most of his life, biking right up to the moment when the tiredness put a stop to it. We knew something was wrong, even though the doctor didn’t seem too worried and rolled out the rounds of tests and scans very casually. The doctor was slow but my dad’s cancer was fast. Right after the diagnosis, my dad went into hospice. The nurse thought he would live for a few more months, which was shocking to hear, but in reality he had only a few weeks. He passed away on Father’s Day. He was 66.

Dad in the ‘80s in his cycling spandex

My dad, Randy, was one of the most enthusiastic people I knew. I’d like to think that I’m full of interests and hobbies, but for every one interest I have my dad probably had ten. And these hobbies weren’t just your typical dad hobbies. Although he did love to fish, camp, and grill out, he also loved to bake (especially bread), cook, read, go to church, take photos of nebulas with his elaborate telescope that sat in my parents’ dining room, bike and watch cycling races (if he was still here he’d be watching the Tour de France right now, but Drew is watching it for him), run, and listen to music of all (or, ok—most) kinds. He loved jazz, classical, bluegrass, rock, and he knew of more indie bands than I did, which always made me feel ancient whenever he’d quiz me about it. Which he did, often.

More ‘80s: that’s my sister Lauren, my mom Becky, my sister Ashley, me, and Dad

My dad also loved to garden, and I definitely got my love of gardening from his side of the family—both his mom and her mom grew beautiful flowers in the midwest. My dad loved vegetable gardening, and when I was growing up in Illinois he always had a plot going at the end of the backyard. I especially remember the tomatoes—on summer nights my mom would cut a few big tomatoes into slices, and we’d put salt and pepper on them and eat them raw. When my parents moved to South Carolina, the gardening wasn’t quite the same. Dad made a raised bed and tried growing vegetables, but they never grew as well as they had back in the Midwest. Dad was convinced it was the soil—in Illinois we had black, crumbly soil, but in the Carolinas the dirt is red and clay and really not great for growing in. I’m not a fan of it either.

One of the Floret collarettes

So my parents started growing flowers instead. Are they easier to grow than vegetables? I think they are, at least in the South, where there are a lot of garden pests flying around and causing trouble. My parents grew zinnias the first year, and then last year when I stayed with them my dad got very interested in dahlias, which he’d never grown before. I grew dahlias from seed and planted them in the raised bed, and they seemed to like the Southern heat. Like most seed-grown dahlias, ours were collarettes, with big open centers. But what my dad really wanted were the more intricate-looking dahlias we’d see on Youtube, the cactus and pompons and waterlily kinds. “That one’s my favorite!” he’d say, pointing to a dahlia variety on the tv, only to choose another one a minute later.

I’ve written a little about that year in South Carolina and how hard it was at the time, but looking back it’s very clear that it was meant to be and that I was lucky to have it. I’d spent years living across the country from my family, seeing them only a handful of times, and during the pandemic I went two years without being able to visit. Living so close to (and oftentimes with) my parents gave me plenty of time to catch up. My dad and I hadn’t always seen eye to eye in the past (mainly politics—what else?) but gardening gave us something to bond over. We’d watch Gardener’s World together and he’d tell me about his mother’s and grandmother’s gardens, and because he was such an enthusiastic person he was one of the few people I knew who could get as excited about gardening as me. Not only would he not get bored whenever I started droning on about seed sowing or propagation or what have you, he’d ask questions!

I sadly don’t have any pictures of my dad and I gardening together, but here’s one of us apple-picking in Illinois, sometime during my dad’s mustache years

When Drew and I decided to move to Brooklyn last November, my dad and I cut the dahlias down and left the tubers in the ground, mulching them up for protection during the winter. I also ordered some more interesting looking tubers to send to my parents to grow the next year, only to find that my dad had bought a bunch of tubers too. He was able to plant them all sometime in early spring, right around the time when he put the finishing touches on a new shade structure my parents had had built for their backyard. I don’t know how he did it. He had to have been sick for a while already, but my dad wasn’t the kind of person who complained. He installed the lighting on the shade structure and he planted the dahlia tubers, but he never got to enjoy either of them. By the time the weather got nice and the dahlias started to bloom, he was too sick to spend any time outside.

A dahlia about to bloom, grown from one of the tubers planted by my dad

In the end, the shade structure and the dahlias ended up being some of my dad’s last gifts to my mom, who can now sit outside in the heat under the shade, admiring the dahlias planted by my dad. She’s the gardener now, and a good one, too. Her mixed containers on the patio are beautiful, thriving underneath the added shade of the new roof. And the dahlias look better than ever. All of last season’s dahlias came back early, and while last year the raised bed looked a little sparse, this year it’s full of blooms, thanks to the new tubers planted by my dad. The new varieties are coming up now—I wish Dad could have seen them. I think he would have had a hard time picking a favorite.

I also wish that he could have come to Brooklyn to see our garden, but at least I know I can always go to South Carolina to see his garden. The dahlias will come back every year, lovingly tended by my mom, and they’ll always make us think of him whenever we see them. But chances are, we’ll have been thinking of him already. He was a special one.