This is a story so beautifully told, I feel I may have known your dad. Not that I actually did, but we were both born in 1957, and so just those numbers alone resonate. Tears came to my eyes at these last two paragraphs, as that love that explodes inside, filled up inside me too, and that is when the water in these dry Sjogren-diseased eyeballs once again leaked out. It so rarely does now. I love the final joke. It is because I consider myself an outlier, and have described myself as an outlier on any statistical chart you want to put me on -- that I feel I would have loved your dad, had I ever met him. Just as much as his family and the community he touched, loved him.

Thank you for writing -- and sharing -- this gorgeous story.