These are facts.

My dad died last week. It was sudden, unexpected, a heart attack at 5 AM that took him before my sister could get to the hospital at 7. I had early warning when she texted me that she was on the way to the hospital. I got up, made my coffee, sat down at my desk to work, and before I could even come to grips with the start of my day... he was gone.

My dad was born in 1952 and lived 72 years. He left behind 3 children and five siblings, and countless other lives he touched briefly or deeply.

My siblings both prepared remarks for his memorial. I did not; I'm not sure I could have written down and read out loud all the things that I'd have needed to say, so I said some things off the cuff that are both true and could in no way encompass who my dad was to me. Some of those are gonna come out here.

He put my feet on the path.

I can say with utter certainty that everything that is my career and central hobby has come about because of dad. He fought to ensure that I and my siblings had access to a home computer, which was the first step on the path to who I am today. I got to treat it as a toy, a tool, and a refuge, all because of those first pushes from him.

My siblings, too, got those first pushes from him. My sister is a civil engineer, having come up through road construction following in my dad's endless footsteps along the many kilometers of northern Alberta roads and highways. My brother, the mathematician and programmer, had the same options I did, and also dad's mathematical aptitudes from the earliest of days.

He gave me the sky.

My dad gave me a love of the stars and the gift of the Northern Lights; my parents' choice to live on the praries in the far north of Alberta meant that the big open skies were full of light, and we watched the aurora dance regularly.

As an anniversary gift he took my mother skydiving, and while she injured herself on her first landing, he formed a lifelong love of it. Many years later, when we were all old enough, he brought his three kids with him to show us the joys of the sky too. He didn't jump a lot more -- I think less than 10 all told -- but I have 39 jumps in my logbook, only stopping because of a persistent shoulder injury. If not for that, I would have thousands more.

I look up at stars, sattelites, and planes and think of him.

I will miss him every day of the rest of my life, in small ways most days and in massive bursts others.

That is a fact.

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