Today the tears flowed thinking about Dad

I am still mouring Dad dying 6 months ago.  Today the memories are more alive to me about Dad than the 13 years he spent in the nursing home from 1997 to March 2010 when he died. 

Mom came to work and ate lunch with me.  We talked about Dad and I cried and cried.  Dad wasn't perfect, he was a human being with complex thoughts and at times did some pretty foolish things.  But Dad was a loving, kind man, he looked for the good in everyone and he was seldom disappointed in his love for everyone.

When Dad went into the nursing home in Marlette in October 1997, after being severely disabled from brain tumor surgery.  In a way I shut off my emotions about him living there, living half a life there (to me), gone were the times I could just talk to Dad on any number of times we loved to discuss, history, world affairs, reading...

So I put away from myself that Dad was disabled and not as he was before the brain tumor manifested itself.  I would see Dad and love Dad but it was like my father was a beloved child, not the complex, thought-stirring man who guided me in my ways of thought and knowledge.

Dad suffered three times before he died in March.  He suffered the brain tumor which disabled him,  he suffered prostate cancer and endured radiation therapy which made that prostate tumor go away, and then he had pancreatic cancer which took his life in nine months.
I miss Dad more now than I did when he lived 13 years in Marlette.  I am awash with the memories of  dad's part in my life.  Sunday School, Band trips, my sisters' weddings, working 6 years with you...our many talks we had while I was his secretary and supposed to be doing his clerical work and we'd run down history lane discussing Uncle Herbert in World War I, Sir Winston Churchill and his patriotic speeches during the beginning days of World War II, my own interest in Eleanor of Aquitaine...whereever I wanted to go in talking history, Dad was right there with me just as interested.

Above all things, Dad was about love.  Love for mom and us his daughters, and then the grandchilden...Dad expressed love in his smile, his handshakes and his bear-hugs.  "You know I love you?"  Dad always asked me...and I so miss this love today.