Dylan Stafford

Dear Lisa,

Happy 4th of July, 2024!

This is our ninth fireworks day with you gone. You would have been 52 years old today, if you hadn’t gone to heaven early.

How is heaven? I always imagine you surrounded by lots of dogs, happy and content.

Do you listen to music in heaven?

Down here, Dad still has that mega IPod of yours, the one you loaded up with hundreds of full albums of classic rock. Dad listens to it at the ranch. Someday, I hope I inherit that IPod, or maybe Jon and I can have joint custody of it.

You still visit me in music Lisa. Tom Petty. Elton John. John Denver. The music of our childhood. The background soundtrack of Denison, Texas, in the ’70s and ’80s.

Lately I’ve been streaming “Men at Work” on Pandora and hearing forgotten songs that bring you flooding back. Right now “Be Good Johnny” is bouncing in my brain at the kitchen table as I write to you longhand on a yellow pad.

You always loved music Lisa, and Mom and Dad and Jon and I love music still. Music is a connecting love in our family, and special songs bring you back to me.

And of course sobriety connects us.

AA meetings bring you back to me. Where two or more are gathered, there am I–and often, there are you too, Lisa.

Now don’t get a big head. I don’t always share about you in an AA meeting, but if I look, you probably are in half my shares, lifetime. The Holy Spirit bring you back to me when I tell my AA origin story because it was you, you were my Eskimo, leading me out of the cold. You held my hand and intervened and got me off the path I was on, a downward, dishonest and lonely direction.

You were the person who pierced my prickly pride. I was in my early 30s, lost and a decade off schedule. At that age Mom and Dad were happily married with three kids and a home, but I was single and sad, with no clue that my drinking was destroying my relationships. And I couldn’t see that I was sad.

You were newly sober. You were peaceful. You were not lonely. You had a community of new friends. And you shared your sober world with me. I wanted what you had, and you were the only person on the planet I trusted to introduce me to sobriety.

It’s 23 years since you looked at me in a Ft. Worth parking lot after your AA meeting asked me, “Dylan, do you think you might be an alcoholic?” These 23 sober-years since then, these years are all gift. I don’t deserve this beautiful life, but I’m grateful for God’s grace.

It took courage to ask that of your big brother. You took a risk. I could have gotten pissy and told you to mind your own business. But you took that risk, and you opened up my life, this life of my dreams.

You gave me that gift.

So now I’m living these bonus years in gratitude to pay that gift forward.

Being a grateful sober husband and father is how I say thank you and pay this gift forward. And it is how I can honor your life, the life you lived and the lives you touched and the gift you were and are to all of us. I don’t want to just remember you Lisa, I want to honor you.

Mom and Dad are well, as you know. They’re in their early 80s now, amazing. We all miss you. Mom’s created a whole new gaggle of friends at the assisted living compound these last two years, but none of them can replace you. You were Mom’s best buddy, and there’s no replacing a best buddy.

Dad’s got a couple of health items this year, and he’s handling his business as he always does. Jon and I, your two brothers, we are here and we miss you, our third amigo. Jon’s well too.

I still wish I could pick up the phone and call you Lisa. I wish I could hear “‘Nunna!” squealed with delight on the other end of the phone.

I wish I could hear Mom tell me about a shopping trip with you, or discovering a new restaurant in Ft. Worth with you. I wish I could hear Jon talk about a new band discovered with you.

I wish I could still come to Texas and hang out. I wish we could jump in a car together and go drive on a warm summer evening with good tunes and a sunset fading into starlight.

I miss talking to you Lisa. You are one of the best listeners I ever met. In high school, when I was a senior and you were a freshman and I drove you to school everyday, that’s when our friendship started. I wish I could talk to you again, and share all the joy of being a dad and a husband.

I really wish I could hug you again, and lean back and for one deep second see the twinkle in your eyes, face-to-face looking back at me.

Be good be good
Be good be good
Be good be good
Be good Leeesa!

Be good in heaven today Lisa. Enjoy the fireworks.

I’ll look for your twinkle tonight.

I love you,
Brother Dylan