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My thoughts about things. |
| A place to put my thoughts about various stuff. |
| He would have been 80 today, my dad. He was this funny, humble, interesting man that worried a lot and tried his best to make people smile and laugh. The majority of his life was spent as a farmer, which he was very proud of and also caused him a lot of stress. He worked a lot of other jobs to keep our family afloat, but of them all, I think he was happiest up on a tractor, out in the field with the sun beating down and no one to answer to but himself and the land. Dad was disciplined. He never needed an alarm clock to get him out of bed. He had that 'up before the sun' instinct that made his eyes pop open. I can imagine when he was young that this had him bounding out of the bed ready for the day, but even as he grew older, it still tugged and pulled at him to get up and moving. Aches and pains made him move slower, but he still moved. I can relate to that these days. He was strong and not just physically. Emotionally, he was the strongest person I've ever known, but I never would have been able to articulate that until now. He withstood rejection from his own father and still loved him. He took care of his dad with devotion until the day he passed and wept unhidden tears the day we buried grandpa. Dad was thankful that in his father's final days, grandpa told him for the first and last time that he loved him. He had waited his entire life for those words. He was a good husband. Sure, he did things that drove mom crazy. I think all good husbands and wives do that to each other. He loved her, more than words could ever say and until his dying day and beyond. He met her and married her six weeks later. Convincing her to say yes by telling her he was joining the military if she didn't. He did try to join, but with flat feet every branch rejected him. Mom knew. She said yes anyway. She once told me that she made him wait the whole first year of their marriage before she ever said 'I love you' to him. I told her she was lucky he stuck around to hear it. That was part of their way of things. Dad was open and loving and always looking after her. Mom closed off and aloof, only showing true glimpses of what was inside when dad would coax it out of her. They had some bad fights. Mom drove off to her parents' house a couple of times, but she always came back. Dad was always there waiting. She made him work for those special smiles and looks that she only gave to him. And he loved her for it. I can still see the way she would laugh and that look she would give him that made all of the years melt away and it was like I could see them back when they were first together. Those shared moments of love and experience together that would make the rest of the world disappear. He was a good dad. So much more so when you know how his own dad treated him. That he took all the insults, physical abuse and pain his own father gave him and used it as a guidebook for what never to do with his own kids. Soft spoken with self-deprecating humor, he always said he was 'just a dumb old farm boy'. My heart hurts to know that a part of him always really believed that nonsense. He was also a rock. He served as a volunteer firefighter in our small town and raised the funding to start an ambulance service, becoming one of the first EMTs to serve on it. If a neighbor couldn't get their crops in, he was the first one there with our equipment helping to do it for them. He served as a township trustee and spent countless nights helping pull vehicles out of ditches and round up cattle that escaped fields. He was a school bus driver. He knew the families and the kids. Kids loved him and expected the big candy canes he would have to give out on the last day before Christmas break. They respected him and behaved because they wanted his nod of approval and knew he knew their parents. Throughout the year, he would wear different hats while driving to make the kids smile. He had lots of different farm hats and cowboy hats, plus he would find odd ones - a top hat, civil war caps (both blue and grey ones), a clown wig, a sombrero and a bunch more. He loved making people smile and laugh. He had a lot of motorcycles over the years. Hondas and Harleys. He was so proud when he got his first Harley Davidson. He worked on them all. He was the best mechanic with no formal training. Just the need to get something fixed and the ingenuity to feel out how it worked. He loved to read and dance and draw. He would read at night when his insomnia kept him up. He would put music on in the living room and pull mom up to dance just because it was a Tuesday night and the rain kept him out of the field. I found his caricatures up on the wall of our back porch above his CB radio when I was in junior high. I had never known my dad could do something like that until then. He loved spicy food and hated cheese. Would eat an onion like other people eat apples. He started smoking when he was 15 and quit after he had his first heart attack at 45. He rarely drank alcohol and loved root beer barrel candies. He had a cool, fast car when he and mom were first married. It was black and on the way home from work he was going to get a ticket for speeding - tired and not paying attention. He ducked down back roads and hid the car behind a barn because they couldn't afford a ticket. He soon sold the car so they could buy medicine for my brother when he was a baby. He started developing Alzheimer's a few years before he died. The last time I got to see him, he hugged me and I could tell he struggled to understand that who I was standing before him was the little girl he knew. I can still feel his hug and hear his voice. And see him sitting staring off into space at nothing. Lost. Confused. Waiting, but not knowing for what. He's none of that now. Dad passed away quietly on September 17, 2023 at 1:55pm. It was a Sunday and mom was right beside him the entire time. Now, he is everything he ever wanted to be and more. Free of pain and open to his memories again, instead of locked away from them. I am reminded of him every day. And I miss him, every day. I am thankful that I was lucky enough to have him as my dad. |
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