My Father, the Giant

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.

Yesterday afternoon, my dad, Erik Dybkaer Andersen, lay sleeping at home in his hospice bed when a calm settled over his body and he drew his last breath. He was 78. For more than a year, we had known that cancer would take him; only the hour was uncertain. But it is still a shock to find him missing from his bedroom, from his family, from the world. It is too early to measure, much less put into writing, all that he meant to us. For now, I want only to read his life into the record, and to get across his essence, above all as a caretaker of those he loved.

My dad’s mother became pregnant with him in Copenhagen, shortly before Allied forces drove the Nazis from that city. He adored her all his life and would want me to note here that during the occupation, she carried papers for the Danish underground in his big brother’s stroller. He didn’t talk much about his early years, save for a