I Still Miss Him

One year ago today, on April 26, 2009, I lost my dad. One of the best men I ever knew.

You'll have to forgive me for not being as wordy, or eloquent, or intelligent as I am in other updates on this blog. This is still, even after a year, too personal. It's too deep for me to separate it from emotion.

Death leaves a wound on the soul of anyone who knew the person who died. And that wound is even worse when it was a loved one.

Dad was many people over his 66 years. He ran track in High School. He was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, with his MOS being in Intercommunications. He was a nerd who loved the classic Doctor Who and comic books. He was a geek who loved playing on the computer and learning new tricks. He was a redneck who loved fishing and camping. He was a Christian. He was a family man. He was a patriot who loved this country more than almost anything other than God and family, even while he hated the way things were going.

As I said, he was a family man. There may have been times when I was afraid I disappointed him. There were times I made him angry. There were times when I wasn't entirely convinced he didn't want to kill me. But I always knew he loved me. He never let me doubt that for so much as a second.

He was a good man. Not perfect, but good. He never stopped teaching me the things he thought I needed to know, even when I thought I didn't need to learn them. He taught me without words most of the time. I know the kind of relationship I want if I ever get married because of the way he lived out his marriage with my mother.

 

I know the kind of dad I want to be, because I saw the kind of dad he was. I know the kind of man I want to be, because I know the kind of man he was.

Strong but gentle. Kind but firm. Patriotic but not blind. A lover of God and family and country, in that order.

It's almost impossible to get everything I learned from him, and everything he meant to me, in one blog. It's hard to find the words to express why 30 years with him could teach me so much, and yet not nearly enough.

And it's hard for someone who normally talks about everything other than feelings and emotions to express the deep levels of emotion stirred up since he left us.

Should I tell you about the weeping in the days and weeks after it first happened? Or about the months of hope followed by fear and dread? Because my father didn't die suddenly. It wasn't one of those situations where we woke up and he didn't.

We took him to the hospital on January 28 of that same year. A couple weeks later, he was home. A couple hours later, he was back in the hospital. He never came home. Lung cancer was the ultimate cause of death, but pneumonia is what killed him.

Maybe I could tell you what it's been like since? How there are entire weeks, even months, where I feel nothing. Then I see something I know he would've gotten a kick out of, or something that he would've had a comment about, or something I know he would've hated, or even something I want his opinion on...and it all floods back.

I once compared it to the feeling after having a tooth pulled, and that isn't too far from the truth. Right when the initial shock wears off there is a brief period of agony. Then it subsides. You know the injury, the hole, is there, and you can't help feeling around the edges of it. But then something happens, something shoves itself right into that still unhealed wound. And it's suddenly like it happened only yesterday.

He left me with a wonderful sister from this marriage, and two other wonderful sisters from his first. He left me with the tools needed to make my own way in the world. He left me with the knowledge that he loved me.

But today we go to his memorial and say goodbye again.