I used to own part of a season ticket to the Cubs -- since I didn't get to go to many games last year, I relinquished my portion to my former boss -- and that particular year, she had tickets for the Father's Day game. At the time, her daughter was still wee, plus she's the coolest former boss in the universe, so she either gave those tickets or traded me for another day or something. Anyway, I asked Dad to go, and he was like, "All right. Excellent."

Dad hated my driving, so we took the South Shore into Chicago and then rode the Red Line, is it? Or maybe the Brown, I can't remember, but it was his first time on mass transit in the Big City. It was also cheaper, since I was near broke that weekend and he didn't have any summer school classes, so he was pretty broke, too. But we got there and took our seats in the way upper deck, which is tough to get up to if you're in remission for cancer or grossly out of shape like me. Anyway, we sit down and order a couple of dogs and a couple of beers, and Dad said, "You know, this is the first beer I've had since before my chemo," to which I replied, "Well, I'm not carrying you down if you get loaded." He grinned.

I can't remember if the Cubs won that day or not, but I do remember the L ride back to our stop, or what I thought was our stop: Anyone who knows me even a little knows that my sense of direction isn't so good most of the time, and there we were, walking along Washington trying to get back to Michigan Avenue. We finally ended up taking a cab, for which almost didn't have enough money between the two of us to get, and we barely made our train back into Hammond. Needless to say, Dad was irritated at my spaciness, but I didn't realize that, after what was a long, long day for him, he was exhausted and not just a little bit in pain. Still, after seeing my gas tank nearly on empty when I drove him home, he called me 15 minutes later to a) ask if I had gas to get home and b) to tell me he had a great time and to thank me once again for a great Father's Day.

Twenty-seven days after that, we would find out the lymphoma got in his spinal cord. It would eventually blind him and paralyze his throat so he couldn't eat.

But in the picture taken from that June 16 on my message board, he has that grin. He looks a little thin, and you can tell he's lost most of his hair, but the grin is very much there. It's the last picture ever taken of him.Oh, whatEVER.