Posted by: Dylan Stafford | July 4, 2026

Dear Lisa, Happy 250

Dear Sister Lisa,

It’s 6:07 am on the morning of the 4th of July. America celebrates 250 years today. I’m at the kitchen table with the windows open. I hear birds caw outside. The refrigerator hums quietly. The house is still.

Remember when we were kids in Denison, and how excited we got for the 4th? We’d go to Lake Texoma to shoot fireworks off the cliffs, remember?

And fifty years ago, in 1976, I remember how excited everyone was to celebrate 200 years. Today, fifty years later, I’m excited to write you this letter.

It’s been ten years since you passed Lisa. Each 4th of July I have written to you, up in heaven, to honor you. The first few years I titled the essays “Green Sky, Blue Grass” because my world seemed upside-down when you died.

Time heals. Time takes time.

Today, I set my alarm for 4:45 am and joined a 5:00 am Zoom from Ft. Worth. It’s a sobriety meeting full of people you know, people who were there when you got sober, and later, when you introduced me to sobriety. I got called on today and I shared about writing to you, about honoring your memory and your legacy.

Thank you for gifting me life, Lisa. I’m still sober, one-day-at-a-time. This February 28 marked 25 years of continuous sobriety.

Sobriety. 9/11. Siemens. Layoff. Courtship. Engagement. California. UCLA. Employment. Marriage. Miscarriage. Fertility. Jackson. Christian. Authoring. Speaking. Teaching. Being a Leader. Palooza. Drive Time. Podcasting. Travel. Anniversaries. Christmases. Birthdays. Reunions. Peace. All gifts of a sober life.

25 years of life, lived sober. None of that would have happened without you Lisa. Something would have happened, yes. But it would not have been blessed the way my life has been because you brought me to sobriety.

Today, we’re going to clear off the driveway. Dust off the patio furniture. Set out the firepit. Fire up the grill. We are going to host friends and cook and eat and celebrate.

I’m grateful to live in a time, in a country, in a life, like ours. I get to be sober, married, a father, employable, a citizen. It’s a blessing. You taught me the magic of gratitude.

I’ll keep this year’s post short. Know that I love you. Know that your legacy lives. You gifted Marisa a husband. You gifted Jackson and Christian a father. You gifted your older brother the life of his dreams. Thank you Lisa.

I love you sister,

Nunna

P.S.

Oh yeah. Two more things.

1) The photo

That’s Christian (14) and Jackson (19) and me on the golf course in Colorado. Another gift of sobriety, Christian and Jackson are teaching me how to play golf. Talk about humbling, at 57 I’m having my two sons explaining golf to me, “Dad, you look like you’re chopping wood. You’re chunking it. You’re topping it.” Oh they have a lot of coaching for their dad.

Humbling, yes. Satisfying, incredibly. I get to be 57. I get to be married. I get to be a father. I get to learn golf. Good stuff!

Jackson is still 6’3″ and now Christian is hitting his growth spurt. He’s 5’8″ and a full 8 inches taller than he was two summers ago on our last Colorado visit. Blessings of the day.

2) The Lord of the Rings

Remember my paperback copies of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” from childhood? Remember all those hours I sat on the couch in the living room in Denison, reading? I read “The Hobbit” seven times. I read the trilogy three times.

I’ve kept all four books and brought them with me all around the world.

This summer, I’m re-reading them. I started “The Return of the King” yesterday. It is blowing my mind that the last time I opened these very copies I was in high school, forty years ago. The books still smell the same. The covers are falling off. The pages have turned yellow. My same eyes read these same pages four decades ago. I’m loving it.

Blink. Life happens. Love you sister.

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Posted by: Dylan Stafford | May 19, 2026

Ten-Year Lisa Love Letter

My younger sister, my only sister, Lisa died ten years ago today, on May 19, 2016.

She would be 54 today if she had made it.

This letter is to her, for her, from me, her brother.

—

Dear sister Lisa,

How’s heaven treating you? Can you believe you’ve been there ten years? You probably already know everything I will write, but I like talking to you sister, especially today.

Questions:

Are there puppies in heaven? I imagine infinity with puppies everywhere and you surrounded by little yelping, laughing, loving spirits, peaceful and content and wiggling.

And how about time, is there time in heaven? Some people say God is bigger than time, so maybe no clocks in heaven. Just curious.

Down here, we still have time. I’m 57 now–Bwahhh! 57 makes me laugh when I say it out loud. 57 can’t possibly apply to me…but it does.

The last ten years have been without you Lisa. Even with ten years passed, everybody still misses you: Mom, Dad, Jon, Marisa, Jackson and Christian, our friends, me. We all miss you.

Updates:

Mom and Dad are well. They are in their early 80s now, and strong, lucid, and mobile. We are blessed by them. Brother Jon is his creative self, making songs and being the best son and brother and uncle. Marisa and I are well, with Jackson and Christian growing strong. Marisa’s huge family is full of new great-grandbabies; it’s beautiful.

Our boys: Jackson finished his freshman year of college. He went away to Baltimore, to Loyola University Maryland. His major is Chemistry. He made straight A’s, including Organic Chemistry I & II, with labs. I never got close to all A’s! He’s 6’3″ and doing great. Christian is completing 8th grade in a couple of weeks. He loves basketball and practices and plays on several teams. I wish I’d had more respect for sports growing up, because I see the many life lessons that Christian is learning that will serve him well in life.

Marisa has hit her stride as a management consultant. She helps executive teams untangle and move their organizations forward effectively. She loves her work and her business is strong.

UCLA Anderson is still my home, working with MBA students who are building companies, careers, and lives of significance. Podcasting has hit a new level. We made a mentor program. We are connecting alumni and current students and building community. As always, it is deeply rewarding work. Over the upcoming decade, I want to teach and speak and write: teaching about leadership, and speaking and writing on family and faith and children. I finished my third book last year, Daddy Muscles Too. You’d like it Lisa, it has more humor.

Time marches and I still miss you Lisa.

I miss you on your birthday. I miss you at Christmas. When we go to church in Ft. Worth with Mom and Dad, certain hymns bring you back to me. I miss you in Colorado. I miss you at the ranch. I miss hearing your “pet-whisperer” high-pitched squealy-voice. I miss hearing you say, “Hi Nunna!” when I walk into Mom and Dad’s home and seeing you sparkle and hugging you. I miss your long, delicate fingers and your beautiful penmanship; nothing beats a Lisa Note. I miss your amazing sense of style with your clothes. I miss your passion for music, and Lady Gaga and Tom Petty are Lisa-keys that always evoke you. I miss driving and talking with you, about everything. I miss our phone calls.

And I miss you for Mom’s sake. Mom lost her only daughter, but she also lost one of her best friends. When it’s time to shop, I think how you and Mom would have tackled whatever shopping task was pending with vim and power. Jon and I do our best, but we pale compared to you when the topic is shopping.

What else?

Your loss doesn’t stab me like it did the first years. Your loss is a temperature change now, not a stinging jab. A moment is a little cooler without you, but the crushing shock of your death has passed.

Mom talks about frequency, intensity, and duration–that we can measure our healing from trauma by seeing how frequently, how intensely, and for how long it hits us. All three are lower for me, and I don’t get sideswiped by grief now.

I still see you in the clouds, especially on road trips. You don’t visit me in my dreams like you did the first couple of years after you left. You come to me at church; Christian will look up at me and notice me quietly weeping–that’s a visit from you.

You are with me in sobriety meetings, especially the 7:00 a.m. Ft. Worth Harbor Group. You and I attended that meeting in person back in 2001. There are friends there who remember us, who knew you, who attended your Celebration of Life. That meeting went online in March of 2020 and I zoomed every day for three years straight, and I still go several times a week now, at 5:00 a.m. California time. Those relationships are magical, a loving bridge back to before you left earth.

Your life, your legacy, exists for me each day in my sobriety. I wouldn’t be sober without you Lisa, and without being sober, I’d have none of the gifts of this life. You held my hand and showed me how to trudge the road of happy destiny, 25 years ago. On February 28, 2001, that night I started sobriety, thanks to you, and with you. You were so transformed on your own journey, and I wanted what you had: peace, generosity, patience, love. You showed me a new path, how to take life one-day-at-a-time, and practice these twelve-step principles in all my affairs.

My whole life rests on a foundation of faith and sobriety: Family, Friends, Contribution, Love and Community, Relationships–they all stack on top of faith and sobriety. My life is blessed, and I wouldn’t have these blessings without your guidance Lisa.

Thank you Lisa. Thank you for 44 perfect years of having a little sister, a little sister who steered her big brother to a blessed life.

Thank you for these last 10 years of the memory of you and your legacy of sobriety girding my life.

You’re in my heart today Lisa. Thank you for the gifts and the guidance. I honor your memory, one-day-at-a-time, and I pay it forward walking this earth as a sober person, slowly learning about humility and service, like you showed me.

I love you Lisa,
Nunna

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Posted by: Dylan Stafford | January 2, 2026

Repeat the Sounding Joy

I would not leave you. In times of trouble.

Catholic girls start much too late.

Even rode my motorcycle, in the rain.

It’s Friday night. January 2, 2026. 7:21 PM. It-never-rains-in-southern-California, but its raining now.

My sons are 18 and 13, the adult teenager Jackson and our brand-new teenager Christian. Both are here, home tonight. We’ve finished dinner. Dishes washed. Dried. Put away.

And I’m inspired; I’m daddy-diary-driven. It’s been years. My cousin Carla gifted me her new book of poetry, The Coffee Cafe, and I read it cover-to-cover New Year’s Eve. Scenes of Americana from Bakersfield, California. Love and loss, tattoos and poetry, coffee and ideas. Carla’s poems are inspiring me to write again.

Jackson is home from his first semester of college. Christian is half-way through 8th grade. I’m 56. My wife is still 29, again. She’s happy to stay perpetually sunny at 29. Tee hee! We have our chronological age, and our mental age!

The leader of the band is tired, and his eyes are growing old. But his blood runs through me still and he’s my hero as always. Dad celebrated 60 years of marriage to Mom this year. 60. Wow. Respect. Dad always listens to me. When I’m in my brain-on-fire mode he’ll say, “That would be good in a book.” Or he’ll quote Bob Dylan, “I will know my song well before I sing it.” Always encouraging me towards art, creation. We enjoy the “Great Conversation” over decades.

He was born in the summer of his 27th year.

Music got me through my youth, to 27 and beyond. Music carried me, the lift to live. Bedroom-turntable getting ready for school. First record: Billy Joel, Glass Houses. Windows-down in my pickup truck with no AC, driving to high school with the 6 x 9 speakers bumping. Cassette tapes. Radio, and praying for a great next song. Driving to college, five hours to A&M with the windows down in the Texas heat. Sound waves lift. Songs re-member. Songs repeat.

They say that he got crazy once, and tried to touch the sun.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

Childhood Candlelight Christmas Eves. Memories flood back. Holding the candle, watching for drips. Advent calendars: 25 day countdowns with little chocolates, one-per-day. The magic crescendo to Christmas morning.

Can’t sleep. Wake early, before the parents. Gather my collaborators, my younger siblings Lisa and Jon. Three little mice. Pajama-clad kids. My sister with long strands of hair in the sides of her mouth, eyes twinkling, a little elf. When will they wake up? When can we open presents? After presents, cinnamon rolls and orange juice and eggs and bacon. Mom cooks a special breakfast. My brother runs through the house, his hands flying his new spaceship that makes different noises when he points it up, or down.

Then a Christmas morning drive. South. To our grandparents “down in Dallas” in the 70s. Walking in the backdoor at grandma and grandpa’s home, “Harold Dear” and “Bobby Dear.” Greeted by apple juice and goldfish crackers, and hugs. A tiny home that smelled like plaster. My grandfather with his leather vest that smelled like pipe smoke. A home full of nooks and magic and leftover clues of my dad’s childhood. Pictures. Trophies. Artifacts. Dad, a skinny child once? It couldn’t be. Could it? A kid, like me?

Christmas now, 2025.

We flew across America, Los Angeles to North Carolina, a week to make new memories with family. All four of our own parents now in their 80s. Still strong in some ways. Slowing down in other ways. Laughs. Forgets. Repeats. Lots of Repeats. What? Could you say that again? Does anyone still hear well?

Small moments. How many more? Don’t count. Just. Be. Here. Now.

My mother-in-law doesn’t say much. Most of her words are gone. She answers questions with Yes, or No, or not at all. But her eyes still sparkle. She’s in there. Her soul shines out even as her body retreats.

My father-in-law cares for his bride of 66 years. He’s a mountain of a man. Teacher. Entrepreneur. Deal-maker. Father of five. Double-digit grandfather. Now a great-grandfather, with more on the way. My wife gets her strength from both her parents.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Indeed.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

Mom. I am blessed by your love, always. Thank you for your love of words. Thank you for your Joy. Thank you for creating our family, past, present and future. You are the center of all our orbits, the “egg in the meatloaf” that holds us all together. Thank you for always encouraging me, and Lisa and Jon.

Dad. The leader of the band. Your gentle means. Your strong hands. Ever the role model. Thank you Dad for showing me how to be a husband and a father. And how to backpack and fix things and read and stay organized and chill.

Lisa. Sister Christian. Oh. The time has come. Missing you Lisa. Always. Thank you for teaching me how to live sober. Touch wood, it’ll be 25 years this coming February.

Jon. Brother Jon. That’s what friends are for. Thanks for all you do for Mom and Dad. Thank you for your Joy and your creativity. Your art with your music always inspires me.

Teach. Your children. Well.

Well, I’m a father now. Me!? My own children. Two. Sons.

The past. Is just a good bye.

Don’t you ever ask them why.

Just look. At them. (*Sigh*) And know they love you.

Steak. Tonight Jackson cooked steak. Really well. Well not Well. Medium rare actually. He sears way better than me, and I’m the one who was raised in Texas. His Christmas gift to the family was a 10″ stainless steel fry pan. Tonight: Room temperature meat. Salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the pan. Hot. Add olive oil, instantly sliding around and really hot now. The sizzling contact and then three minutes on a side. Exhaust fan working. The house smells great. Baked potatoes. One for everyone. Sour cream. Cheddar cheese. Pepper and salt. Butter. More butter, just in case. Touching me. Touching you. Sweet Caroline. I’m feeling fine. Bah Dah Dah. This is my life. Nobody told me it could be this good.

Christian cheered on Jackson from his gaming PC in the next room. NBA 2K26. His avatar, the 6’8″ digital Christian Stafford is crushing it. Averaging 60 points a game. With a career high of 111 points. Plus, Christian keeps giving his avatar new tattoos. Tonight, his avatar is rocking a giant rose on his back, and a huge “6 7” on his chest. Six-Seven, how many times did I hear that this winter? Christian is cooking on the digital court while his big brother rocks in the kitchen.

Sizzling steak dinner here in never-raining, yet wet wet wet, southern California tonight. Dark too early. Cozy. Both boys back under one roof after Jackson’s first semester of college, so far away in Baltimore(!?!?) Could he pick a school farther away? Okay. I get it. If I had his parents, I might stretch my wings too.

Family. After-Christmas homily. Jesus had to flee. Joseph had a dream. Get out of Dodge! King Herod is still looking for you. Flee. From a manger to a refugee in Egypt. Humble. Scared. A family together in stress. Listening for God’s direction. How blessed am I to raise children in 2026, in a country with running water, with streets, with electricity? Blessed.

Nobody told me there’d be days like these

Indeed. Strange days. Peaceful days. Circumstances circumstancing. Life doing life. But everything falls into place, eventually. My momma told me.

My bride. Thank you Marisa. For this life together. You always re-listen when I repeat my joke.

“I gotta get some new charts,” say I.

“Why?” you reply.

“Cuz loving you is off the charts.” My punchline.

But it’s a serious joke. You smile, hearing it repeated. I smile with gratitude because I could have missed all of this. I got sober in February of 2001. I met you three months later. I’m still sober. We’re 22 years married. I’m getting the hang of being your husband. And life keeps getting better.

Catholic girls start much too late. Do they? Maybe that is a good thing? What was my hurry? I’m grateful for you, my exotic Catholic girl. You introduced me to a whole new world.

Grateful for our marriage. Grateful for children-becoming-men. Stand up straight. Pull your shoulders back. Look upon the world with peace, with strength, with humility, with curiosity.

No. No. No. It ain’t me babe. I don’t know how to be a dad. And neither do most dads. But we do our best anyway.

Thank you Marisa. I might be as crazy as they say. But you chose me. Anyway. Newly sober. Laid off six weeks after 9/11. When I proposed to you in the summer of 2002, without a job, you saw who I was, without all the perfect trappings. You saw the me I could become. You married me, flaws and weaknesses and goofiness and all. You gave me that New Jersey promise, “Divorce never…Murder maybe!” You have blessed me beyond my dreams love.

It was me you were looking for babe.

You get prettier each year. Nobody told me a wife could get prettier. Prettier on the inside. Prettier on the outside. Your faith. Your family. Those generations who made you. All of them shine through you. You bless all around you, family, friends, customers, neighbors.

She was… (You Are) an American girl.

Song. Sung. True.

Solitary man. Transformed to a married human. One plus one is three: father, son and holy holy holy Toledo. You plus me is we. Nobody told me. The joy repeats. The joy repeats.

It sounds. It repeats.

Music: the art form all other art forms aspire to be. Music lifts. Music moves. Someone saved my life tonight.

Marriage: nobody told me. It gets better. 22 years for Marisa and me. 60 years for Jack and Ginny, my parents. 66 years for Brad and Barbara, Marisa’s parents. 69 years for Alphonse and Helen (now deceased) Marisa’s grandparents who danced at our wedding in 2003. Married role models all around. Nobody told me. They showed me.

Merry Merry Happy Happy 2026.

May you look and seek, and find. May peace, unearned and gifted by grace, find you and lift you and bless you with your hopes and dreams this coming year.

Peace. Peace. Peace.

Songs. Sung. True.

Repeat the Sounding Joy.

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