“It Felt Like He Was Right There With Me”
For thirty-two years, Tina carried the wish for one more day with her father, Thomas. A tribute song built from his life gave her some of what she’d been missing.
Thirty-two years is a long time to carry a wish.
For Tina, that wish was simple: one more day. One more hour. One more drive with her father, Thomas — the man everyone who knew him called Tom.
Thomas B. Robson served in the Army and spent forty-five years driving big trucks for a road construction company in California. Tina describes him as “somewhat a quiet, gentle man” — the kind of father who could tell stories for hours, and who listened to hers without judgment.
Who He Was
“He would do anything to help someone, especially a woman in need,” Tina says. “He never wanted anything in return.” He taught her how to work on cars, how to drive big trucks — and, as she puts it, “to be kind, but don’t let anyone take advantage of you.”
He was playful, too. Tina still laughs about one night when she and her sisters were kids: their father sent them out after dark to start a load of laundry in the garage, which back then was only framed in, not finished. He’d slipped out the other door and was waiting behind the washer. When one of them reached for the soap box, he held the other end and pulled it back. They screamed and ran for the house — and when he came in right behind them, they screamed all over again. “He was so tickled by it,” Tina says. “We still laugh about it.”
The First Listen
When the finished song arrived, Tina describes it simply: “It was very touching. I listened to it over and over. It felt like he was right there with me.”
“One more hour, one more moment, one more drive.”
That line — a direct echo of the very thing she’d wished for since he passed — is the one Tina keeps coming back to. “It helped me get some feelings out that I didn’t realize were so raw and close to the surface,” she says.
Somewhere to Return To
Tina shared the song with her kids and friends. Now, more than thirty years after losing her father, she returns to it almost every day.
You can visit the tribute Tina created for her father here: the tribute Tina created for her father.
“It’s Never Too Late”
If a friend were grieving and wondering whether too much time had passed to do something like this, Tina knows what she’d say: “It’s never too late. It is very personal and only between you and them.”
Looking back on the whole process, she puts it simply: “It touched my heart like nothing else could.”
Tina’s story is shared with her permission. Their Life Song creates original tribute songs and permanent memorial pages, written entirely from a family’s own memories. Learn more at theirlifesong.com.