We have an ongoing competition in my family. My brother, Tony, and I are adults now — I’m 57, he’s 59 — and my parents have been divorced 25 years, but since we were kids and still today, whenever we get together and one of us says something funny, that person calls for a vote.“Who’s the funniest in the family?”My brother votes for himself. My mom votes for herself. I vote for myself. It’s always a three-way tie. No one ever votes for my dad — not even my dad — because he never says anything funny.A month ago, my daughter and I visited my dad in the hospital. He’s OK physically, but he has dementia. In the last year, he’s gotten so forgetful, he’s landed in the hospital four times because he can’t remember to drink water. He can, by the way, remember to eat cheeseburgers. So, he’s lying there and it looks like he’s wearing a pillow over his belly and under the sheet, not a huge pillow, but a padded something, and my daughter, who’s 21, points to his gut and says, “What’s in there?”My dad opens his eyes and draws his arms out wide and says, “Lunch?”We died laughing. All three of us. If my mom and brother were there, this would have been my dad’s chance to call for a vote. Hell, I would have voted for him. This is my dad now. He’s funny.The author and her dad on a fishing boat on a family vacation in 1978.Courtesy of Andrea AskowitzWhen I was a kid, my dad didn’t seem interested in me or my brother. At the dinner table, my stories would meander. My mom tells me my stories had branches and my branches had branches. She says I loved to tell the same story over and over, which charmed her, but my dad got impatient. I could tell when he trailed off. He’d look away or at his food or sometimes change the subject. I always wanted more of his time and attention. I always felt rejected. When I started competing in sports, he tuned in more, but it was still my mom who took me to tennis tournaments on the weekends and sat in the stands while I won or lost and then celebrated or consoled me during the car rides home.When I talk to Tony about our childhood, he agrees that our parents consisted mostly of our mom. When our parents were out of town, we said, “Mom’s out of town.” Their bedroom was “Mom’s room.” If we wanted permission for something, we knew we had to ask our mom.My dad was quiet and distracted. He worked every day, including half days on Saturdays, and drove an hour each way to his optometric office downtown. He provided. He was kind. He wasn’t present in the day-to-day, but he did somehow impart words of wisdom that I’ve remembered my whole life and still live by. "This is a classic shot of my dad — having a drink and smoking a cigar — in 1990," the author writes.Courtesy of Andrea AskowitzOn a family vacation when I was about 8 and my brother was 10, the three of us were fishing at this spot we loved in Duck Key, Florida. We reeled in yellowtail and snapper as fast as we could cast. Our bucket overflowed. When a man and his kid walked by, the man yelled, “Catch anything?”My dad stretched his back. “Nah,” he said. I was confused until they were out of earshot and my dad said, “Never tell anyone you’re catching fish at your favorite fishing hole.” In the months and then days leading up to high school graduation, I felt panicked. I sat on the end of my mom’s bed talking to my mom about how afraid I was to leave home. My dad was lying back, watching a game on TV, one of his full-time positions. I was sure he wasn’t listening, and then, without taking his eyes off the game, he told me I’d be all right on the day I left. “Fantasy,” he said, “is always better or worse than reality.”The summer after my first year of college, I knew my mom told my dad I’d had sex for the first time with my old high school boyfriend. I’d told my mom I wasn’t in love, but he was a good guy and I didn’t want to die an old maid. A few nights later, my dad fixed me a drink, vodka on the rocks, and motioned for me to join him on a balcony at a family party. I felt awkward, looking over the marina in Coconut Grove. I was 19. We’d never shared a drink together. We’d never hung out, just the two of us, for the purpose of talking. He was cool, and in his Zen-like way he said, “It’s better to love than be loved.”The author and her dad celebrating the birth of her first niece in 1995.Courtesy of Andrea AskowitzNow, every week when I visit, he asks me what I’m up to. This interest in what I’m doing and how I’m feeling is new. He says, “What’s the good word?” I say, “I’m playing a lot of tennis.”He says, “Is that so?”“I’m competing again and now I’m ranked No. 3 in the state.”“Wow, that’s pretty good.”“I’m gunning for No. 1,” I say.“I think you can do it, sure, why not?”We’ve had this conversation many, many times. I love this conversation. I get to go on and on about competition and conditioning and he never gets tired of it. He seems to follow my branches. When he asks what division I’m playing in, we always laugh when I say I’m in the 55 and overs. He says, “How did you get so old?”I say, “How did you get so old?”“You got me there.”The other day, I told my dad I was in a funk. I love tennis, yes, but I said, “It’s weird, I used to care about changing the world. Now, I just care about changing my second serve.”“Same thing,” he said.Is it? Does he mean doing something I care about is all that matters? Or maybe he means both pursuits are fruitless, but what difference does it make?Maybe he knows what I haven’t yet experienced to know myself. Like panicking about leaving for college, I can give in to anxiety or trust that I’ll be all right. Maybe he’s teaching me to just live.I don’t mean to be Pollyanna about this. I know this is sad. My dad is losing his mind. The author, her dad (right), and her brother celebrating her second niece’s wedding in 2024.Courtesy of Andrea AskowitzFor my brother, my dad’s dementia is the hardest to bear. About 35 years ago, my dad left optometry and started a commercial real-estate business. Soon, Tony joined him and the two became partners and bought properties and rented out warehouse spaces. My dad was the guy who negotiated with banks and buyers. He understood interest rates, percentages and people. He did stacks — a financial breakdown of cash in, minus expenses on management and maintenance — with a pencil and paper. He could remember a stack on a property — on multiple properties — from year to year. He never used a calculator. Tony says he learned everything about business and managing people from my dad. Now, he says, they think exactly alike.Tony called me yesterday after taking my dad to Flanigan’s for dinner. The waiter told Tony that my dad’s aide brought him earlier that day for lunch. I asked, “Did he have a cheeseburger?”“Yes.”“What did he have for lunch?”“A cheeseburger!”We both laughed until Tony said. “This is rough.” Tony was the first to notice my dad wasn’t on his game. It was five or so years ago in a meeting with their accountant. My dad did a stack, but couldn’t remember he’d just done it. He wasn’t able to evaluate the stack against the previous year. He repeated himself. These days, Tony will occasionally consult my dad to keep him involved in the business and to test his own logic. But he feels alone now. Tony lost his mentor and his mate. My dad knows he can’t remember what he did this morning or how to get to my house, but when I ask if he’s stressed about his memory, he says, “What can I do?”The author and her dad in 2025.Courtesy of Andrea AskowitzWhen I was a kid, I wanted my dad to listen to my stories about what my teachers said in class and what I did with my friends on the weekends, but that wasn’t my dad. If I’ve learned to think like my dad — like my brother has — I would guess if I mentioned wanting a different kind of dad, he’d say something like, “Wanting is different than having. Notice what you have.” No dad is perfect. I know that now and I don’t want to miss what I actually have. “What can I do?” This is my dad, and even with dementia, he is the person who teaches me the big things that matter.Next week, when I visit my dad, we’ll go out for burgers and maybe order vodka on the rocks. It won’t be awkward this time because now we’re used to hanging out, just to talk. I’ll tell him I’m playing tennis again and how I’m feeling about everything. He’ll ask me questions and I’ll get his full attention, for hours if I want. I think I’ll ask him what he meant by “same thing.” Who knows what will come out, but I’ll get my dad, now more than ever.Andrea Askowitz is the author of the memoir “My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy.” She’s written for HuffPost, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Glamour, The Rumpus, NPR and PBS. Andrea hosts the podcast “Writing Class Radio,” which has been downloaded more than a million times. She’s at work on a memoir and a new live storytelling series called “All Sides of the Story.” Find more at writingclassradio.com, andreaaskowitz.com, @andreaaskowitz and @writingclassradio. Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.