Dear Dad

[joeys-game]

Dad,

I'm glad we had that last couple of weeks, i'm glad you didn't choose to leave this world before i got a chance to know you, even just a little bit , i'm glad you met Angie. I can feel you sometimes,watching me, perhaps shaking your head, probably cringing at the mistakes i make. I really wish that you had met my boys, you would have liked them and they you.
I miss you dad.

 

[sutherngent985]

Dear Dad...

Another Fathers Day that we wont be together because we are so far apart. I see you going further and further into Alzheimers and miss what we used to have. Im sorry I used to roll my eyes when you would tell sea stories...now there isnt a day goes by I wouldnt give anything to hear them again. I wish we could go fishing again like we used to. Or go out to watch the dog run rabbits on those bitter cold sunday mornings. Anything really just to spend time with you since I know you wont be here much longer, either through Alzheimers or death.
You would be be so proud of both my boys...they are doing great in school and are growing into great young men. I just try to raise them like you raised me...lots of love and a little discipline. I want to tell you how proud I am that you are my father and I am proud to be your son.

Your son....

 

[cantdog]

Not Inigo Montoya; my father was ineffectual and he died

My daughter told me we had chosen an admirable day. Radio weather priests had descried it: the wind wouldn’t exceed 5 to 10 miles per hour, so our paddle would be calm and benign. She told this to every member of our party. All the wind had to do was hold that way until nine o'clock this evening, she told us. Hedge witches know the value of projected mental energies for a weather magic.

I rose before six. It had been cool in the night, gusty the day before, but by eight, the sunny calm day was already manifesting. For some days we had prepared for it. We’d bought wood, we’d arranged people's schedules, we’d laid plans and loaded vehicles. Some of us arrived at her place before noon to move the couch out of its side room and down the stairs into the back of her grandfather's pickup. I was released from my work at noon, with two canoes already on the roof rack.

Part of the fun today was that two of the five of us were new to the camp, and so had no very clear idea what they were getting into; they’d come along with joy, just the same. My daughter can make these things occur. For a friend you just do it, without reckoning or stint. Thus she was raised.

The stout leather couch had to cross a mile of water, but moving large objects by canoe is a mature technology. We knew what needed to be done and soon had the canoes twinned. We’ve moved refrigerators, stoves, stacks of mattresses and box springs, and loads of lumber this way, often with fewer people and in much rougher weather.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/movingthecouch03.jpg

In the pictures you can see the two crosspieces lashed in against the thwarts and the tensioning lines attached bow-to-bow and stern-to-stern. If all you need is safety in rough water, a single crosspiece will certainly create the catamaran, with the tautlines at each end, but we were hauling and required a platform.

The man seated on the couch is her grandfather. It was his pickup, and we wanted to show off the camp to him. He’s eighty or so and you have to watch him all the time or he’ll hog all the heavy lifting. Four paddlers, seated normally in the canoes, with the fifth man in the middle of the couch, made a stable and balanced craft, and he could perceive that, but he wanted to paddle and put my daughter in the couch. Hah. She prevailed again. She can be stubborn; he saw the set of her mouth and sat still. When I told him we couldn’t see very well to steer, he was soon rumbling, “We need to head a little more to port.” Made me grin.

The lake was of course nearly glassy calm, too. Hardly a zephyr stirred the surface; they didn’t dare.

The only recalcitrant object was the ancient hide-a-bed we were replacing. My sister possesses photos of me and that enormously heavy couch taken when I was ten and it was red. We moved that elephant from house to house many times when I was growing up and each time it had made us pay.

We hoicked the thing out through the doorway and maybe ten meters along the trail, when it occurred to us, during a break, that we were going to break it up into pieces anyhow. We left it there. It was, in fact, lighter than it had been in my youth, because so many families of deer mice and mus domesticus had nested and raised families in it over the years it was at camp.

I remember the excessive donkey labor it exacted of us to be ferried to the camp in the same way we moved this one. In those days, we had no landing to use, a mere mile off, but brought everything the length of the lake, many miles, beginning from the little sedgy stream mouth behind the fire ranger’s cabin. The cussed thing had been due to be replaced a generation ago, but inertia is powerful, and my father could not move men to willing effort as my daughter can.

 

[impressive]

Father's Day *bump*

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Dear Dad,

I'm not glad you're gone... but I am glad you weren't here in this place to experience the loss of the grandchild we named after you.

And part of me hopes that my sisters are right, that there is some "other place" ... some version of heaven... where maybe you did get to see him first, and you are holding him now.

But I still wish I was holding him here... that we both were.

I wish I had something to hold onto, still. Losing both of you in the space of six weeks should have been enough to kill me. Sometimes I wish it had.

Remembering you both on Father's Day...

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Dear Dad,

You left before I knew you. You have no impact on me other than to leave a void. Now and then, day by day, I close it a little more. Now I am the father and my boys know me. They know what parts of their personalities, which strengths and weaknesses they get from me. They know where they came from.

Now and then you pop up, cause trouble, and then disappear again. Its who you are I know now. If I've learned anything from you, I've learned from your mistake. My boys will know every day that I love them. There will never be a doubt, I won't allow it.

I am the father I am, not because of you, but in spite of you.

So when I celebrate today, I do so with my head high, and with my boys by my side.

 

[Guest]

Dear Dad,

Thank you for being the man that you are... so that I have an example of what not to look for. I know it sounds harsh but you did your damnedest to make sure that I felt like I wasn't yours and that the errors that occurred between you and my mother were laid at my feet. I have done my duty... I told you about your grandchild, the one that you refuse to acknowledge... do not ever come back to me and blame me for your non-involvement. I desperately needed you Daddy. I needed you so very much a few times, even if you had never been around any other time I wish that you had been there to hold me like you do everyone else. I wish you well on father's day. Goodbye.

Dear Step-Father,

Unfortunately your letter sounds so much like the one that I wrote to my dad. You both are so incredibly similar it is scary. I will thank you for being human to my brother. At least he got the father figure that he needed a man that he could be manly with. I am glad that you are there for him and around so that you can do all the things fathers are supposed to do for their sons. My wish for you is that you relish and sink into the grandfather role. Thank you for asking about my son everyday. It means alot to me.

Dear Wyatt's father,

He is beautiful. I have the absolute best of you, thank you for that. Please continue to live your life away from us, it's better that way.

 

[Katyusha]

Dear Dad,

Sometimes I want to crawl into your lap like I did when I was a little girl, and sometimes I just want to slap you. You were a good father to me when you chose to be, but you more or less let me raise myself while you coddled my two sisters so I'm not entirely sure I remember what it was even like to have a father, and sometimes I find myself so angry at you for that, for not being there when I needed you, even though there were still times when you were.

I'm 30 years old now and I look back on my teenage years wondering why you seemed to think I had it together. I didn't, and I still don't. All the problems our family went through affected me just as badly. I had, and still have, just as many problems from that as my sisters do, they just don't manifest themselves in the same ways. I feel you should have known that, should have known that even in the tightest, most stable of families, teenagers don't have it together and need their parents, whether they realize it or not.

You're my father and I love you, and I always will. I just wish you'd been there for me when I needed you most.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Wow. Old thread that brought tears to my eyes.

Dear Pop,

I think of you daily. When I see your initials etched into something (you marked all your tools with your distinctive initials), the stab of loss hurts just as much. We needed your guidance. We needed you to teach us what we didn't know. If you were here now, I would listen to you. I'd learn everything you had to teach, so it wasn't lost. If you were still here with us, if you hadn't left us right when we were hovering between child and adult, we would be different people. Probably better people.

You didn't think I was listening, but I was. I'll probably never have my own kids, but I try to make the world a little better by being the kind of person you wanted me to be - to have kindness, integrity and respect for other people and myself.

We could have been friends. I miss what I didn't even know.

I wish you were here, Pop.

 

[ElizabethWest]

Dear Daddy,

You died ten years ago today. I can't believe it's been that long. I miss you and wish I had been able to tell you I love you one more time. I'm glad you are at peace.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Still a beautiful thread. All the best to its author.

 

[Misty_Morning]

Dear Dad,

Thank you for giving a name a direction in life.

I am proud to know you refer to me as your "most beloved daughter".

Only you could sacrifice for others the way you have.

You set the standard.

 

[Dianthus]

Dear Dad,

This Christmas means there are now more Christmases in my life without you than with you.

I knew I didn't like math.

 

[Freefall_mc]

I was checking out the Edward Wagenknecht collected Christmas stories book handed down, and I found it. How could you know? Were you thinking ahead, at such a tough time for you, of this coming holiday season?
I waited to venture into deeper unknown waters on purpose. I should have known your respect would be untainted, and your love unconditional. Thank you.

I am so proud that you were my father, and I will continue to sing to you once in awhile, though I am not quite as good as you, with your deep James Earl Jones base. I sooo miss your voice.

And yes, I guess I am the new family master at 9-ball, huh.