Amiee Michele Sadler Eulogy for My Father

Eulogy for My Father Amiee Sadler Please excuse my language, but my daddy was a badass. It’s hard to remember that your parents had a full life before they were your parents, but knowing what I know about my daddy, it’s not quite as hard. According to him, he grew up in the projects under less than ideal circumstances, excelled at football, and went to Harvard University on a football scholarship. He was drafted into the army, served his country with gusto, and proceeded to get the heck out of Dodge. Even though his boxing career proved otherwise, he liked to say he was a lover, not a fighter, unless you pushed him. After he was discharged, he came back and graduated from Vanderbilt with his Juris Doctorate. He did some high profile lawyer stuff (his words, not mine) and loved arguing and took great joy in teaching me to do the same. He was destined and determined to succeed. While he was a brilliant attorney, he was not a wealthy one. This lack of monetary success was a direct result of his passion for people. He was more concerned about helping people than getting paid. While this is honorable, it wasn’t always efficient. But, that was my dad. He always wanted to help anyone who needed it and never met a stranger, animals included. He was the only man I knew who walked around with dog treats in his pockets, just in case. He was full of joy, and I could hear his laugh from down the hall. He had an open door policy and would talk and listen to anyone who needed him. He was deep, like insanely introspective and intuitive, and I would leave from our conversations thinking I understood the concept but would wake up hours later thinking, “Dang, Daddy, that’s deep!”

As much as he succeeded in life before I was, as he would say, a twinkle in his eye, his greatest joy was being a dad. He often told me that’s what God truly created him to be. I was the first kid in my preschool to be able to spell my name. It wasn’t luck. It was the fact that my daddy wrote a song for me to sing me to sleep at night. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I won’t torture you all with it, but it was my name spelled out followed by “That’s Amiee, my baby.” I learned how to properly clean the kitchen because my daddy wrote a song for me to remind me to sweep before I mopped, and that song still plays in my mind when I have to clean. He taught me long division and how to solve multi-variable algebraic equations when I was in kindergarten. When he got pushback from my teachers who understandably didn’t quite know what to do with me, he politely informed them that it wasn’t his fault I was a genius and smarter than them. Tact wasn’t always his strong suit. He demanded, not

so politely, that my karate sensei let me take classes with the green and purple belts even though I was just a yellow belt because I was too tall to spar with the other kids my age, and I had to sit out of so much of class. When I wanted to audition to be a performer at Opryland Hotel, he helped me choreograph a completely inappropriate dance to a completely inappropriate song and applauded his eleven-year-old emulating 1996 Toni Braxton. It was bad y’all. It wasn’t his best idea, but he did it with love, so we’ll give him a pass. He read to me when I was doing homework and too tired to read for myself. When I wanted to play basketball, he picked me up from my mom’s house at 4:00 A.M. every day for weeks to go run laps at the park even though he was walking with a cane, and he tirelessly counted my baskets as I shot 100 free throws when it hurt him to stand more than a few minutes at a time. He then had a few choice words for the basketball coach who wouldn’t let me try out past the first day because I was really that bad.

Krystal’s was our spot. We ate chili-cheese fries after leaving the gym and sunrisers before church. Daddy defended me fiercely whenever anyone had anything remotely negative to say about me. He gave me my first drink of alcohol and helped me hide my first hangover. Sorry, Mom. He was the first person to know I was pregnant with Blair and was more excited to be a grandfather than anyone I’d ever seen. When I was in the operating room for my cesarean section, he sang to me and reminded me that God choose me to be her mommy the same way God choose him for me. He taught me how to meditate, and to this day when I get overwhelmed with anxiety, I can hear him telling me, “God in, love out.” He believed in me when I didn’t think there was much to believe in. He would randomly call me at crazy hours to tell me he loved me and that he was happy to be my dad. He always saw me as the best me I could possibly ever be and would not be persuaded to think any differently, no matter who tried. He reminded me that my name meant “beloved one who is of God,” and I was forever his beloved. As amazing as he was at being my daddy, he had an equally completely amazing identity outside of being my hero.

The last time we talked he told me over and over that he loved me, and he was proud of me and of my accomplishments, and I told him I was most proud of being his daughter. I don’t know how to live in a world without my daddy, but I find peace in knowing that this world is a better place because he was in it. He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect for me. I love you daddy, and I’ll miss you always. We all will.