Today is my dad’s birthday and today he would have been 81. So it’s almost been 10 years since he passed. In his case, he truly was not suffering anymore but it’s hard for me to think about what the last months must have been like. He was damned and determined not to have to go to dialysis like my uncle did. I think in the end it was renal failure that was the ultimate cause of death. One of the regrets I have by not having him here is the health narritive that he could have provided, insights as to what I have in store for the future heathwise. I try to make comparisons but I didn’t know much of dad when he was 50. I’m sure I sent him a card and he got a call, I’d have been in the process of failing out of my first try at college at Clarion but about all I remember of him from the time was a care package that included a carton of Marlboro 100’s.

I hope that in some way he’s been able to see the good highlights to what I’ve done since he left. Stopping drinking and smoking, buying the truck and the RV, going back to school and most recently paying off the house. We were kind of annoyed at each other while he was here, him at me for not living up to my potential and me at him for not being much of a father. I always faulted him for being in such poor health, he hurt and couldn’t move and I didn’t understand it. I mean I hurt but I still move. I think it was the depression that got to him mostly, wether that was his own doing or chemical imbalance we’ll never know and is pointless to think about.

Today, I’ll just try to remember good times. My earliest clear memories are in the mountains of Colorado when we lived in Denver, I remember listening to an 8-track, and an earlier time on a motorcycle driving to a lake, and the lake seemed to have paths through the bushes all around it. I remember driving throught he mountains and seeing cars that had slid off the side of a hill and him saying it was too dangerous to retrieve them so they just left them.

I don’t hold much hope of an afterlife, I always felt that if there was a possible way to get a call from the other side it’d be from dad, that maybe because he never said goodbye that it wasn’t really goodbye… And who knows, maybe it isn’t. Miss you dad, happy birthday!!!!