I still miss him..

Sunday is Father's Day. My father passed away in 1989 unexpectedly from heart failure, apparently just as Tim Russert did today. I was very fond of Tim Russert and the passion that he demonstrated when doing his job. I was watching one of those tribute programs this evening and then my emotions got the best of me. The tears weren't because of some apparently decent man that I had never met, but they were for my father. The father that I haven't talked to for almost twenty years now. I miss him terribly. He left a big hole in my life when he left us. He wasn't the Cliff Huxtable or Ward Cleaver father. He wasn't perfect and he was flawed, but he was my father. He had a passion for WWII history, sports, his hometown of Rugby, his parents, and our family. I never really talked to him about school but I could tell that he was proud of me. I remember the day of our football state championship he was more nervous than me. He had participated in tournaments of that caliber and he could relate to what I was going through. He was so proud of my athletic achievements and he was the ONLY person in my family to see me play college football. He showed more concern for me than anyone else did as I started to slide off the deep end in my second year in school. He wouldn't talk to me about these things, but I could tell that he knew something was wrong and that he cared.

He would have been a wonderful teacher and coach, but circumstances led him down another path. I could tell that occasionally he wished he had taken another path, but he accepted the choices he made in his life. He worked very hard, and at the end of his life he would work an entire Saturday every week as he just couldn't keep up with the demands of his work. He knew that he had to work hard to provide for his family that he loved so much. I remember the deep cracks in his hands, and the tired eyes that would try to lighten the mood with a joke at dinner. I can still remember how he smelled when he carried us to bed when we were little. He would always stay up to watch Carson's monologue and my brother and I would laugh just because he would laugh even though we had no idea what was funny.

The hardest thing about all of this is that I can't share my present life with him. I wish that Lorelei could have met him. My father would have loved her. I wish that he could hear Maddy read a book, or watch her at her ballet recital. I wish that he could play ball with Edison or watch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants with the kids. Most of all, I wish that he could see that I got through the dark period in my life that I was in when he died and I came out the other side a better man, husband, and father.

I miss you dad. I miss your laugh, your twisted sense of humor, your love of "The Jerk", your stories of playing football for "Broken Bone #49", and I miss the talks. We will meet again, share a laugh and a story, and have another heart to heart talk as the sun rises like we did when I graduated from high school.

peace

cd