Belated Father's Day

My parents

I (Michele)  wanted to write a blog honoring my dad for Father's Day.  I wanted it to be real not words that we say after someone important to us dies. My dad was not the dad that wanted to be with us all the time or always involved in our lives. He wasn't always the kind of dad I wanted to have and I wasn't always the daughter he wanted. I was closer to my mom, I wasn't daddy's little girl, well there was a time when I was closer to him. We would sit around the table and talk about God and how we should live our lives. My dad's father died when my dad was young and although his mother remarried he was never close to him. He didn't have a good father figure around and said he had no one to model after. My dad was the one who told my mom to just shut the door when my room was a mess and not to get worked up over it. He was the one who had a talk with me after my mom smelled me smoking in the bathroom when he was gone on a business trip. In Jr. High he was the guy all my boyfriends hung out with, they would say they were coming over to see me but they ended up with my dad. The boy's in my class always wanted him to chase them. They would call me to see if my dad was home and then would come over at night and have my dad chase them out of our yard. Ha-Ha. They still talk about it today. 


When I went to  college for three years and then quit, he never reminded me that he had paid for all three years and what a waste. He said any college at all was good. When I got older and left home my relationship with my dad faded and I became closer to my mom. When I would call home my dad would talk to me for a minute and then say let me give the phone to your mom. He was the one however who when my two year old daughter got sick and was in the hospital for a month would cry so much that I had to tell him to dry his eyes our he couldn't go see her because she would be scared. He is also the one who 19 years later cried with me when she got sick again with melanoma. He was scared to lose someone he loved. I think this was because he had lost his father and knew what a void they left in your life. When I had children he wrote me a letter once and said that now that I had children of my own I knew how he he felt about me. I was so surprised, my dad loved me as much as I loved my children, that was something I had never thought about before.


Life went on and my dad had a bad bout with cancer but came out of it. He then made a dream of his come true when he and my mom moved to Branson Mo. It wasn't until the second round of cancer when he was in the hospital for months that I was able to let my dad know what he meant to me. I was able to help care for him, to be there in the night when he called out and my mom was exhausted. To help feed him and watch him learn to feed himself again. My dad made me proud of him each day he fought on. He didn't become bitter and strived to be positive. He clung to God and to my mom. I was able to tell him I loved him and hug him and tell him everything would be alright. We knew this didn't mean he would be all right but that the rest of us would go on. At his visitation I heard many stories about him. How even though it wasn't the business' policy he let people have more days off when they had a sick parent, or how he had got someone a job and how he had created a job at the plant for someone whose job was being eliminated. My dad was a reader and a fisherman. He lived his dream of living on the water in Branson. He loved my mom! I love you Dad!