Remembering my dad on his birthday

My father and me, me and my father. The parental unit, alpha unit, dad, daddy, pop, papa other moniker which indicates a male parent. I generally referred to my father as dad. He signed his cards dad, letters too were all signed dad. Well unless they were to someone else then he signed his name or dad if it was to one of my siblings. Dad, has been gone now for 11 years, it seems so much longer. The empty place that is created by losing a parent is always there. Nothing fills it back up. Memories are just that, memories. I can’t call him up and talk about something that is bothering me or to tell him what the kids are doing. I still remember his voice and the rough feel of beard stubble and the smell of coffee when he would hug me. He always had a firm hand shake and although he was small in build was stronger than he looked. I remember him telling me stories of his growing up in various places because his father was in the Navy. How one time he had convinced his older brother John to piss on a car battery behind a garage and the resulting shock his brother got and having to run home with his brother chasing him. Living in Florida and Michigan and how one was different than the other. What it is was like being a child diabetic. I remember him telling me how his high school girlfriend, not my mother, got mad at him and threw his class ring into an open field and he had searched for hours until he found it. There was one about wrecking a car and it rolling over a bunch of times on some back road, and how his mother’s favorite punishment for him and his brother was to hit them with a shoe. His story about meeting my mom, and how she almost didn’t go out with him. He wore a beard most of time when I was a kid, until it was too grey for his taste and then he never wore one again. In fairness he did go pretty grey in his late 30’s so I can see not wanting to have that much grey hair before you were in your 40’s. There are a lot of memories of my father, various things good and bad. The morning he called from the Cleveland Clinic to say they found a donor match for a heart transplant and he would be going into surgery soon. I remember talking to him about nothing really important just stuff, a normal conversation, but in the back of my mind I was thinking this could be the very last time I talk with him we should be saying something important. Ironically the last conversation my father and I had was just a normal conversation about getting ready to buy the house where I live now and how the kids were doing. Nothing earth shattering, not so very important, just a normal conversation. Our last words were good ones, typical last words in a phone conversation; Love you, talk to you soon. Sort of the automatic things you say when you talk with family. I didn’t know it then but that just regular conversation was the last one we would have. The thing I associate most with my father is coffee. He drank the hell out of some coffee. Those who know me and think I drink a lot of coffee, have no idea what it is to drink a lot of coffee. I rarely saw my father without a cup of coffee ever. Even when he had an orange juice he had coffee too. What I learned from my father is you never give up and that life only kicks your ass when you stop trying even though I may not always remember that lesson. When I think about what my father was like as a person it isn’t that he was perfect or the greatest it was that he always kept trying to make the lives of those he loved just a little bit better not with a grand gesture or a big prize just little regular everyday things. Well, that’s all for now, other stuff to follow most likely Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday Thank you for reading, please subscribe, Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood. Ciao, Invisible Don PS 3 / PS4 Gamer Tag: invisible don Invisible Don PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015 Send me Post Cards … I love Post Cards