Parting Shots

Love you, Dad

When my dad got sick back in 2020, he started a blog on CaringBridge to keep his devoted but sprawling social network up to date on the progress of his treatment and general well-being. If you’ve had the common but nonetheless incredibly challenging experience of knowing someone with a serious health issue, then you’ve probably heard of CaringBridge. If you haven’t, then 1) lucky you, and 2) it’s a free platform that allows users to centralize updates, donations, and well wishes through customizable websites.

I’m not yet so depraved as to compare the quality of CaringBridge content, but let’s just say my dad’s was exceptional. He didn’t simply update readers on the state of his health—in fact, he rarely dwelled on his illness at all. Rather, he built something that, to this day, I have a hard time naming. He was always a tremendous writer; I think if you’d asked him to boil his identity down to a few words, “writer” would be the first thing he’d say with any conviction. Even so, the essays and blog posts he wrote on CaringBridge transcended mere mastery of craft. They were portraits of a man getting acquainted with what matters, endeavoring to make peace with life’s most terrifying and unjust qualities.

As a reader, his CaringBridge helped me make peace too; there are times I’m able to access a level of acceptance that is only possible because of the care my dad took to document his journey. He wrote about it with a kind of love that remains alive in every line, still available to us when we need it.

For this reason, I felt that his CaringBridge, which he fittingly called Now for the Important Stuff, deserved a well-intentioned, if insufficient, attempt at a goodbye. Below is that attempt, written on March 18, 2026.

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Hi everyone,

We wanted to end Now for the Important Stuff on a more “Joe-like” note. Of course, it goes without saying that attempting to write like Joe is so daunting a task that it’s almost embarrassing to try, but we feel we owe him, this blog, and all of you who faithfully followed it over the last five and a half years a bid at a proper send-off. I figure I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to imitate my dad anyway, so this seems like a fine place to start.

Okay, so… what do I say next? I’ve been pondering this question for the past two weeks and haven’t made much progress. How can one possibly sum up a man who was so great at living that it feels like life is over without him? As you may have predicted, I’ve reached the conclusion that you don’t. Dad was simply too big for summaries, too wise for quotes, too funny for tribute songs or eulogies (though I won’t discourage anyone who wants to write a song, I actually think he would love that). No, Dad was someone who understood that “small hours” are what make up the story of our lives (thank you Rob Thomas). He knew it was the little pleasures, pauses, and connections that may seem insignificant or even indulgent, that become our greatest achievements when faced with the next great adventure.

So I suppose there really isn’t one story of Joe’s life to sum up. Not one that I could capture here, anyway. He was some grand and complex combination of sunflower seeds, Van Morrison, mountain biking, Virginia in the summer, adventure racing, strumming an invisible guitar on the steering wheel, John Irving, and a billion little moments he shared with himself and all of you. His life wasn’t nearly long enough, and I’m really really mad about that. But Dad also understood that it never is, no matter how many years you get. And boy did we have fun.

So with that, I want to leave you with one of my favorite things my dad ever wrote, a quote from his soon to be published novel, The Short Happy Life of Cob Logan. I hope it satisfies your craving for one of Joe’s wise remarks, which I suspect we all need now more than ever:

Truth: Let it not be the stopping, the freezing, the capturing of time that matters, but the release of time. For time is no less artificial than the clocks we construct to keep it. Want not the promise of tomorrow or the glory of yesterday, for they, like time, exist only in the imaginations of men. And if indeed you do find yourself needing to take measure of your life, take stock only in the smiles you have given and received, and in the who, the how, and the how well you have loved.

– Joe Graber

On behalf of the entire Graber family, thank you and we love you.

Briton