Happy Father’s Day, Pops

It has been six years since we lost my Dad and in these six years the memory of him has faded from being vibrant and 3-D to being blurred, like an old sepia-tinted picture, beautiful.

My Father and I did not always have the ideal relationship in my eyes. Growing up, he was not expressive with his love for me. The hugs and kisses between he and I were almost always initiated by me. Though I had no doubt that he loved me, my Father always held me at arms length saying that I was a girl and I would one day leave him for my husband’s house. Maybe he loved me so much that he felt that he would not be able to take the grief when that day came, maybe he was steeling himself against that my entire life.

Dad would never live to see the day that his little girl left his house for her husband’s, he left us before that would ever happen. Of course, it makes me sad that he will not be there when I get married but what breaks my heart is that he will never play with my children. My Father loved children, anyone’s children, with a pureness unlike anything I have ever seen. He had the most compassionate heart and it showed in his interactions with my little cousins, the neighbors children or just a baby in a stroller at the store. His face would light up and children would respond to him with the same kind of enthusiasm. I believe that children can see a good and pure soul because they are untainted by the world and I am sure that they saw that soul in my Pops.

If seeing him interact with other people’s kids was so thrilling, I can only imagine what seeing my Father with his own grandchildren would be like. Even though my children and my brother’s children will never phyiscally know their grandfather, I plan on telling them as much as I know and remember about him. I plan on telling them abou his idealism and his kindness, about his pureness (which is the one word that stands out in my mind when I think about him), about the way his eyes lit up and his humor, his charisma which captivated almost anyone he came into contact with and about his sense of family and duty and how he worked so hard for us until the end of his life without once complaining. Dad had a very tough childhood and worked hard for everything he had, but he never begruged anyone anything. He taught his children how to be good, strong human beings with a huge sense of compassion for any and everyone. Dad instilled in us that all people are equal. He taught us how to be classy and to be the bigger person in any situation. Best of all, he taught not on a soap box, but by example.

Happy Father’s Day, Pops. Wherever you are, I know you are in a good place and that you are home. Thank you for all of your sacrifices, your love and your lessons. I will carry them always and pass them on and I will love you always.