Charlie Benante moved his daughter, Mia, to her dorm at Loyola University Chicago on Dimebag Darrell’s birthday, August 20. He shared some photos from the day on Instagram and suggested that Darrell sent him a sign to help him through the difficult moment.
“A weird thing happened when we got to her dorm room,” Benante wrote in his new post. “We walked in, and Mia chose her bed, and we started to move it closer to the wall. She went underneath the bed (it’s a platform bed), and there was a ‘Dime’ lying there. Mia picked it up, and she just knew… Someone was sending me a message on his birthday.”
The drummer explained, “This is so Dimebag Darrell, he would always call me and ask how I was feeling and talk about anxiety and stuff. He gave me this book, ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff,’ and to this day, I still re-read parts of it. I guess he knew that today was a hard one for me, or at least that’s how I’m seeing this occurrence.”
“That made me feel good and took some of the sad feelings away. Give your kids everything you can, be a great parent. I think some of the parents today have failed and it’s a shame. Spend time with the child you brought into this world, be their role model. Okay, enough with that. Love to my daughter Mia, and Happy Birthday, Dimebag.”
Dimebag Darrell passed away after being shot on stage in Columbus, Ohio, just a year following Pantera’s breakup in 2003. Charlie Benante was among the many rockers who attended his funeral as a close friend of the Abbott brothers.
Benante now plays drums for Pantera during their tours, filling in for Vinnie Paul, who passed away in 2018. He carries items from both Abbott brothers—Vinnie’s used gloves and Dimebag’s headband—on stage as a tribute and a good luck charm.
“I put Vinnie’s glove in my pocket and I put Darrell’s headband around my leg,” the drummer told the ‘Vinyl Guide’ podcast in March. “Every night I play with those. It’s like baseball players wearing the same thing. Maybe it’s a bit of a superstition. But for me, it’s something I do for every show, just to have them there.”
Pantera will perform next in Edmonton, Canada, on August 23. Their 2024 tour dates will wrap up at the Aftershock Festival in October, followed by a European tour in 2025.