Lisa Shroyer

And I got a sponge in this bucket.

We had this industrial cleaning solution we'd got from a funeral director.

And...

I'm scrubbing the wall.

And I'd had a very hard relationship with my dad.

All three of us had had tough relationships with him.

And you know, he'd lived this weird life the last few years of his life, traveling and being a full-timer, or a van lifer, or a rubber tramp, they called themselves.

But he'd somehow found some peace out there, and he'd figured some things out about life.

And so I was glad about that for him.

But none of it made sense.

Why were we doing this?

Normal people don't clean up their father's guts off the walls, right?

Like, this was weird, and I was kind of mad about the whole thing, and I'm sweating, and I'm scrubbing the wall.

And I had this memory from when we were kids.

My dad used to say, "'If it's white, don't touch it.'"

And what he meant was, if there was a painted surface, like a wall or a door, he didn't want us to touch it with our dirty hands and get smudges all over it.

That's a real dad thing to say.

Because smudges on things just drove him crazy.

And so I'm there, I'm scrubbing him off the wall, and I say, God damn it, Dad, I told you, if it's white, don't touch it.

And my brother, a few feet away from me, just starts laughing.