Through grief

It has been one week since my father passed.  A long week, but a week surrounded in love and faith.  My father has not left my mind for a single waking moment but surprisingly, most of my time has been spent smiling, happy, grateful.   I spent a lot of time with my dad, especially the past few years, I was his captive audience and listened to many, many stories.  Lately, most of them were ones I'd heard before but I humored him and listened with the same attention.

I'm so grateful for that time because I truly *knew* him.  I knew his history, I knew his passions, I knew about those seemingly small moments of his life, that forever changed him.  I will try to record some here:

  - His father, a blue collar Irish american man, struggling to manage 4 children, would find solace in a bar room.  Like most of us, my father's father was flawed and that was understood by me, the audience of the story, and yet, my father didn't say too many negative things.  Instead, he talked about how hard life must have been for him.  How he had small dreams to deliver home heating oil but my grandmother was afraid of the risk.  How he loved the Lakes Region in NH and had finally made it to retirement and was looking forward to being able to spend a few weeks up there without the constant stress they had endured most of their life when he suffered a fatal heart attack.   My father, as usual, full of empathy rather than resentment.  It was so easy for him to understand how difficult someone else's life was.   When my father was a young boy, his dad returned from a bar room with some friends of his.  He lit a cigarette lighter over my dad and said "that's my boy that I've been talking about.  He's very smart!!!"   Of the four children, my father likely had the highest IQ and a bit of a gifted memory.  His own father likely recognized his intelligence and had bragged about his special son after a night of beers at the local bar.   My father told this memory many times.  For the days that forever followed that night, he wanted to make his father proud.  Sometimes he told the story as though the "pressure" worried him.  Other times, he told it with pride of his own - happy that his father saw his potential. 

Love you and missing you dad. 

Have courage for the great sorrows in life, and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. — Victor Hugo