There are years in our lives when so much happens that they become permanently fixed in our memories. 2017 was one of those years for me.

I have written about Hurricane Harvey inviting himself into our home on August 27 of that year. But just six days later, while we were still trying to comprehend what the storm had taken from us, another loss arrived, one that would change my life in an entirely different way.

September 2, 2017, began with about 25 of our closest friends showing up at our house to help prepare it for remediation. Think about that for a moment. Our home had flooded. Much of what surrounded us had to be removed, torn out or thrown away. Just witnessing that was traumatic enough.

Then, at about 9:00 that morning, my brother called.

The staff at the home where Dad was living had been unable to wake him. They didn’t know what it meant yet. Dad might wake up and be fine, or this could be the end.

I stood there in shock.

All around me were the physical reminders of what Harvey had done to our home, and suddenly my father’s life was hanging in the balance.

Could I focus? I don’t know.

How was I feeling? Was I sick? Was I grieving?

I couldn’t answer any of those questions.

I suddenly found myself capable of dealing only with whatever was immediately in front of me.

At about 10:00 that morning, my brother called again.

Dad had passed away.

I remember standing there and having one of those moments when you wonder: Just how much can one person take in a single moment?

Sometimes life answers that question for you. You discover a limit you didn’t know you had, and somehow, you keep moving.

I wanted to stop. I wanted to grieve the loss of my father. I wanted the world around me to stop long enough for me to understand what had just happened.

But it couldn’t.

There were people in our house. There was work to be done. Our home had been flooded, and the process of putting our lives back together had already begun.

So I kept moving.

Even today, I don’t completely understand how I made it through that day. Looking back, I think those two enormous losses somehow provided a distraction from each other. When the grief over Dad became too much, there was the house. When the reality of the house became overwhelming, there was everything surrounding Dad’s passing.

It was also the first time I experienced what I can only describe as the physical spiral that comes with extreme loss. When I felt myself beginning to fall into it, I learned to focus on something else, anything else.

I still do that to this day.

Since losing Dad, I have written a great deal about him. I even wrote a book about the lives he and Mom shared. I have written about the things he accomplished, the lessons he taught us, the life he built and the family he loved.

But there is one thing I haven’t written very much about:

What losing him did to me.

I was his oldest son.

That relationship was part of who I was from the moment I entered this world. And no matter how old we become, there is something about losing a parent that changes our place in the world. Someone who was always there suddenly isn’t.

Over the years, I have come to realize something else.

Like most of us, Dad could have eventually faded into history. Another name. Another date on a family tree. Another photograph whose story future generations might no longer know.

I wasn’t willing to let that happen.

So I wrote about him.

I wrote about the young man he was, the husband he became, the father who raised eight children, and the man who spent his life doing what he believed he was supposed to do.

Dad wasn’t perfect. None of us are.

But I can say this about him:

He did the best he could.

He provided for his family. He protected his family. He loved us in the way he had been taught to love and care for a family, the way men of his generation often did, sometimes more through what they did than through what they said.

And because his story has been written down, he won’t simply disappear.

Future generations of our family will know that Gene Paul Ingalls was here.

They will know something about the life he lived, the family he loved, and the mark he left behind.

And they will know that his oldest son loved him enough to make sure his story was remembered.

Nine years later, there are things about September 2, 2017, that I can still see as clearly as if they happened yesterday.

There are some losses we eventually learn to live with.

I don’t know that we ever truly leave them behind.

Love you and miss you, Dad.