What were you doing 14 years ago? I remember it like this: it was a Sunday. My wife and I had come out of church in Vacaville, California. It was a perfectly cloudless (what tourists would expect in Cali) day. Our friends were out on vacation and had us watching their home. Which meant we were planning on using their pool...so we rushed home. My wife was in a frenzy getting our then 3 kids ready, swim suits and towels...I checked the answering machine, and there was my moms distraught voice. Telling me to get to the hospital. My dad wasnt breathing. Cancer was finally winning... I got there and a little while later, a tear-streaked and young Air Force doctor (I forget her name but not the look on her face) came out to announce my dad didnt make it. I didnt get the chance to say a thousand things, least of which was to share my fledgling Christian faith and hope with him. But hed heard it before. I had a thousand things to say but they ended when I saw the tube crudely sticking out of his mouth, taped, and this frail image of the man who taught me to laugh, to fish, to love my family with all Ive got...he was a shell. And all the blue sky crumbled into a choking darkness, punctuated by the shrill sobs of my mom, at least I could hold my mom... And the day ended with no tears for me. In a surreal turn of necessity, I had to fill my dads shoes, call the family abroad and make his final arrangements. All of them. Casket, funeral, funeral plot...I still remember driving by and seeing the backhoes dig his grave on top of the cemetery hill. My dad passed away 14 years ago. I left a lot on the table, unsaid, and it still haunts me. So I try, my hardest, to let everyone know: love while you can. Show it, say it. Love fiercely. My dad loved deeply. And if you think I laugh too much as I live through various Hells on earth, my dad taught me that, too. He was an air evac medic and signed up for two tours in the Vietnam war, at least one tour in Korea. He was a hero, looked life in the face and went down swinging. I love my dad. I dont know how well I showed him that, but I did. Rest in peace, dad. And yes, Ive told the kids to pull my finger too.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 17:06:26 +0000
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