Today is my daddy's birthday. He was born in 1920, so he would have been 88 this year. That doesn't seem SO terribly old - I've got a slew of parishioners up there and very lively still. Yet as of this January he will have been dead for the past 29 years. It doesn't seem possible. Like so many of his generation he was a quiet man (provided his temper wasn't riled - I inherited it, I'm afraid), a man who worked very hard and provided for his wife and family. He was at peace with himself and had no need for incessant chatter. I remember the long car rides where nary a word would be spoken. He was a Veteran of WWII and clearly was marked by the time he spent in the army. Rarely did he drink (my mother didn't approve of alcohol in any form) and rarely gamble (though he loved poker). I think of him mostly as a man who learned that denying himself what he wanted for the sake of his family was what manhood was all about. He had but an 8th grade education and reading never came easily to him, but he kept working away at it. Most incredible to me (I'm sure I've blogged on it before) is the day I asked for the piano and out we went to get it. Money didn't grow on trees. He was a refrigeration engineer for Marriott. So this was a significant expense, but he plunked down the money for the piano and the lessons without complaint. It was the most wonderful gift I think I've ever been given. When I sit down to play, I like to remember what a gift - and part of a pattern of sacrifice - from my father.
Happy birthday, daddy! I miss you much, and I think more so with every passing year.
6 comments:
Then he was the same age as my father.
May God keep them both safe in His eternal memory, His eternal now.
And let us have a very merry Christmas this uear and every year until we rejoin them.
Amen! May God grant it!
If I've got the math right, that makes him 60 at the time of death.
Which, when you're 58, seems not that old at all.
A good friend of mine's father in law passed away last Friday, funeral this Wednesday AM.
And of course Nancy was dead not quite a month on our first Christmas without her.
So I echo Anastasia's thoughts, and add that we join them both to our personal reunions, but the great reunion of all whose advent to come is part of our preparation this Advent season.
Left out "also" -- but also the great reunion of all whose advent to come is part of our preparation this Advent season.
"He was at peace with himself and had no need for incessant chatter. I remember the long car rides where nary a word would be spoken. He was a Veteran of WWII and clearly was marked by the time he spent in the army."
Well said, and so true of my father who died three years ago yesterday.
I late, but Memory Eternal.
Post a Comment