My dad passed away on October 9. It was both a shock and not a shock.

He’d been sick for a few weeks. In the hospital and then in a rehab facility. Feeling pretty good and committed to physical therapy so that he could go home.

And then suddenly they rushed him back to the hospital and when I finally got through to my stepmother to find out why, she said, simply, “He didn’t make it.

“I’m so sorry. He didn’t make it.”

This isn’t an obituary. (He already has one.) It’s not a eulogy. (I already gave one.)

It’s just to note that my dad is gone, and I’m sad. Except for the times I’m not. And then I am again.

On the same day my dad died, so did Keith Giffen, the phenomenal art talent who drew Young Barry’s favorite comic book, Legion of Super-Heroes. And because my life has taken so many weird turns, I am friends with Giffen’s longtime buddy and collaborator Paul Levitz, so I emailed Paul to offer my condolences, and all he wanted to do was offer his condolences about my dad, but I just wanted to talk about Keith.

I guess because it was easier.

My dad taught me to play piano and then when my parents got divorced, I didn’t have a piano to practice on any longer. And not a week goes by that I don’t wish I still played.

And now it’s more intense because I associate the piano with my father, a beautiful, talented player, and I wish I could hear him play again. He played the Beatles and Del Shannon and Beethoven and Liszt and Boston and basically anything you could play on the piano.

When I was a kid, he played in a rock band on the weekends, which earned me a teeny tiny bit of street cred when he spoke at my school on Career Day.

As far as I know, that picture up there at the top is the first one ever of him holding me. And there’s no one to tell me otherwise any more.