Sometimes, people die.

When I was six, I walked up from the basement in my grandparent’s house, where my mom, dad, and me were staying.

It was Christmas morning, and I was quite excited to see what Santa had brought me. I knew I was allowed to see what the presents in my stocking were, but I wasn’t allowed to open up anything wrapped until after breakfast.

It was early, and people were just starting to wake up. I was also extremely excited because my grandparents had cable, and I would be able to watch the Disney Christmas parade later in the morning.

I heard my grandpa walking around in the kitchen, and I think he stuck his head into the living room where I was playing with my new toys to wish me a Merry Christmas. Then I heard him fall.

I don’t remember if my dad was already in the kitchen or if he heard me yelling for him, but he sprung into action right away. That man could hear me call “dad” from a mile away, wearing earplugs while riding a lawnmower in a wind storm.

I remember my grandfather’s face starting to change colours as my dad did CPR. I was sent across the street on a mission to call an ambulance, even though I know my mom had already called.

Later that day I still got to watch the Disney Christmas parade with my dad, and he had us open presents the same way we had planned too that morning.

Several years later he told me that he just wanted me to have a good Christmas, no matter what happened.

He was always looking out for me first.

Looking back, I almost can’t believe how much time he must have spent in support of me. I’m not very good at math, even though he always told me that I just needed to practice, but the calculations of hours spent driving me around to track practices, or playing games with me, or the myriad of other things that we did together, would break a mathematicians brain.

In 2000, when we lived in Australia and my dad and mom were teaching there, I was pulled aside at the end of the day at school and told that my dad was in the hospital and that he’d had a heart attack. I was LIVID. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been told. They thought it would have disrupted my day, and that because he was doing fine now, they could have waited to tell me.

“Of course he’d be fine,” I told them, “He’s my dad.”

I knew he would be fine. Dad’s are basically invincible when you’re 11. When we were flying back to Canada a month later, he told me that the only reason he was using a wheelchair was so that we could get chauffeured through all the airports by an attendant and get to skip all the lines.

Over the years since his heart attack, my dad had slowed down from his own level of supreme awesomeness to a level of awesomeness most other dads only dreamed of achieving.

I’m pretty sure that I was one of the few kids in high school who would openly pronounce to everyone that my dad was cool, and people would agree with me.

I also won’t name any names, but several girls I know called him “cute” and/or “sexy”.

He’d been all over the world, like Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Cameroon, Jamaica, China, Vietnam, Australia and I’m probably forgetting quite a few. And not just to all the touristy places either, though he had seen many amazing things.

When we stopped in Malaysia on the way to Australia, he asked the people who worked at our hotel where they would go if they went on vacation, and then, after about a week, we went there instead. We would meet someone local, like a taxi driver, and somehow my dad would talk to them in a way that they would invite us to their home for the breaking of fasting at the end of Ramadan. Or we would be talking to a windsurfer on a beach and have him taking us out on a nightly basis to his favourite area restaurants where only locals ate.

He would tell me that if you were just genuinely interested in what people were talking about, and asked questions with care, people would tell you anything and open their doors.

He took pictures of everything. He told stories about everything. He worked hard outside on the yard and loved to garden. He was totally capable of rocking a speedo.

He taught me to think before I spoke and that it was sometimes better to listen to everyone talk before you said anything. He also taught me that it was sometimes better to interject right away with a joke to break the tension.

A student once perked up in the middle of class he was teaching to say, “Mr. Moolchan, my pen died.” To which he responded, “Where would you like to bury it?”

He could wear a themed tie with his suit and still look classy.

He loved technology, although it didn’t always love him back.

He told me that there was no limit to the amount of time he could listen to me play the piano or sing.

He won a staring contest with this owl.

Two years ago today, I got a call in the middle of the night.

“…your dad has been taken to the hospital. I don’t want to upset you, but I’ll be honest, things aren’t looking good…”

Dads aren’t really invincible. My dad’s heart was working too hard at being awesome for my mom, me and everybody else, for it to make it past 66.

But, in the time he was here, he taught me an entire encyclopaedia’s worth of lessons and a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and for that, I am very thankful.