Thank you Dad for being there and the memories!

What I remember most about my Dad are the memories created with him. Remembering a time when I was a toddler and too sick for church on a Sunday morning, Mom took my siblings, picked up Grandma and went to church. While gone I became sick in the hallway with Dad cleaning up along the way. I remember even that young how he was right there helping without saying a word, Mom would have done the same but she was “Mom”, for Dad to do it seemed strange but I felt proud and special at the same time. He was relieved when Mom came home, but just sat back on the kitchen chair and wiped his forehead with a towel.

Being a traveling salesman, home during the week was rare. On one summer day, a pipe had been replaced in the front yard leaving a rise of dirt from the front ditch to the house. I was probably seven, with no horse at the time to spend time on. Dad stepped out on the front porch and called me over, “how about you spending the day with me, the drive will be long but we will make it fun!”I was dirty from playing in the dirt and showed him my dirty hands with Dad just letting me know I was clean enough to visit the stations he would be going to and sent me in to wash my hands. Coming back I jumped in the truck and went for a day I never forgot.

At eight, seeing him being dumped from a horse into a pile of crap in the corner of the corral, I was sure he would never buy her for me, but he did. She proved to be too much for myself and was later downsized for one at a height I could manage. The summer he did, Dad was home a lot due to something called a strike by Firestone, was not sure what strike meant, only later to realize the next horse was given at a time when money was really short.

Many times in the short twenty-four years I had with him, Dad showed up and was there just in the right moments to guide me and lead me in directions for the better, at times I listened and times I did not in regret. He had a way of guiding without demanding leaving me the decision making in the direction I chose and if I fail along the way it usually was without a cushion, but still knowing the love he had would not change.

He has continued through the years to be there either to assist, answer my questions or be the guiding influence I always knew him to be. When my daughter lost her first child, sitting outside of Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa and really feeling helpless for her he came and sat with me, consoling and loving and letting me know she would be graced with more children which she has been.

The year before my mother left this world via a dream which continued for many months, I spent time night after night with him in an old two-story brown house with a tree in the backyard which overlooked a pond. During that time I could ask him anything I wanted and receive the answers, laughed with him and was shown how silly it would be if those who left this world just popped up back on earth again in the form that was known. In the last dream, as I was leaving the house I asked him “why are you here Dad?” He said he was waiting for mom and she would be there soon. I told him she was fine and would not be coming anytime soon. This was in October of 2002, soon she did come to him.

The earliest known meaning of Heaven was transition rather than a destination. My parents and many more in my family have joined in the transition of Heaven and yet are not far away for me to consider them gone. When love creates a bind it is never broken, Dad is not a regular in my life in this world and yet in times when only a Dad can show a way, he is a constant without hesitation. Today I will say Happy Fathers Day to the man I knew and am thankful for the memories which occupy the heart when the material world is only the facade we create. I feel blessed by all the fathers which have been and are part of my life, now and forever. And I feel blessed too have been joined with great teachers of life.