Fathers Day

[MelissaBaby]

He abandoned us when I was four years old, so I never really knew him. He was killed in a car crash years later, in a state far away.

And yet I miss him, and I wish I could sit and talk with him today. I wish he were here to walk me down the aisle at my wedding.

It's a complicated thing, Father's Day.

Love your Dads, but spare a thought, please, for those of us who have lost ours, or never knew ours or have complicated feelings about them.

She taught me about my father.

One evening, a few weeks after my arrival, she plopped down next to me on the couch. She had a large cardboard box, which she set down on the coffee table. I opened it and saw a collection of my father's belongings. There was a well worn baseball glove and a stuffed tiger. There were a few school notebooks and a Luke Skywalker action figure. I opened a tattered Birder's Guide and saw that he had checked off all the species he had seen, and a Spiderman lunchbox that was filled with toy dinosaurs.

Grandma opened a scrapbook across our laps. We looked at every report card, and at every tiny piece of memorabilia; a circus ticket, a child's valentine, a letter home from Boy Scout camp. We looked at every picture. I saw a laughing toddler. A skinny little boy, cupping a bullfrog in his hands. A proud athlete in a varsity jacket. A smiling groom standing with his bride. I saw a papa gazing with love at a baby swaddled in a pink blanket.

I looked at Grandma and saw silent tears running down her cheeks.

"Oh, Grandma," I said, as my own tears welled in my eyes, "This is all you have left of him."

"No, kiddo," she said, squeezing my hand, "You are what I have left of him."

I had not cried for my absent father since I was a small child. But Grandma taught me that he was not a phantom, but a man. That night, my bitterness melted, and for the first time in my life, I mourned him.

My Fall and Rise, Chapter 11

 

[With_David_Bowie]

13 years, and I've only been there for two, and there has been more on my birthday than not.

As an alternate to the above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYKNqftCkSQ

 

[thør]

It's a complicated thing, Father's Day.

Indeed, the brisket will some out of the sous vide at about 11a, be cooled down and into the smoker by noon. I have kids to feed!

 

[Oblimo]

My father liked to call me an idiot. He’s dying of multiple myeloma now, and I wonder if the obituary I write for him will make the news.

 

[TeflonGuy]

My father liked to call me an idiot. He’s dying of multiple myeloma now, and I wonder if the obituary I write for him will make the news.

Try to mend fences and make peace while you can.

My father used to drink a lot He said and did horrible things to his family when he drank, but physically he's always been weak.

Then one day I hit him for the 1st and only time in my life. I hit him so hard he left the floor and wet through a door as it came off its hinges. And I felt sorry for him. I became a man that day and left home forever. It was my 18th b-day.

I know now my father never knew how to be a Dad. We've become the best of friends and I cherish each moment I'm w/him now. He doesn't have much time left. I don't want to go out like him.