My dad would have been 71 today. This picture is from 1976. My dad is the middle with the lady on his lap. The lady is my great grandmother. The other man is my uncle Jim.
He would have loved my kids. The man seriously loved babies.
The most vivid dream I've ever had came about two weeks after he passed away. I honestly don’t know if it was a dream or if I was meeting him at the Great Starbucks in the sky.
He and I were meeting in a beautiful room with a tall ceiling and a wall completely covered in greenery. One wall was all windows and it looked out over a beautiful lake.
He sat across from me with a cup of coffee in a simple mug. I remember crying in the dream.
He asked me why I was crying. I said that it was because he was gone and I couldn’t talk to him.
He told me that I could talk to him whenever I liked, I just might not get a direct answer.
“Besides,” he said, “you wouldn’t want me back the way I was. I was so sick. Think of me like you remember me when you were just a little fart.”
So today, I’m trying to think of my daddy the way he asked in that dream. I am trying to remember him calling me “little fart” or telling me that we were having “a bait of boiled buttholes” for dinner.
I’m trying to not remember the harsh words spoken between us or the almost violent arguments we would get into. I’m trying not to remember the ache of not being able to argue with him about religion or politics.
I know that when I tell him I love him today that he will hear me.