Happy Birthday Dad

It's not quite midnight so I can still say that today would have been my Dad's birthday.

He died a little over four years ago from cancer.

You think in four years the loss would get easier.  But a day doesn't go by that I don't think of him in some way.  To be honest it didn't seem like four years had already gone by.  The amount of time was reinforced recently to me.  I was at Best Buy picking something up that I had ordered online.  They asked for my drivers license for identification purposes.  When the clerk handed it back to me I gave a glance at the expiration date, wondering when it was coming due.  In Louisiana a drivers license is good for four years and expires on your birthday.  This was back in July, a few weeks after my birthday.  When I looked I saw that my license had expried that year.

The last time I had renewed it was four years ago, just weeks before my Dad died.  I had to take a trip for work to Texas and my license was expiring and had to get it renewed before I flew.  The week I came back from Texas was the week my Mom called to tell me to get up there, my Dad was not doing good.

So it had been four years.

Four years.  I thought at first that couldn't be right.  He hasn't been dead that long, it wasn't that long ago.  Was it?  But I guess it was.  Time continues to pass and his death recedes into the past, if not in my memories.

One last thought of him I had recently.  Last month I had to drive to Alabama for a meeting for work.  Coming back I passed by the turn off from the highway that would have brought me to their old house when they lived in Mississippi before Katrina.  When I lived in Florida and came back to visit that was where I turned to go to their house.  A brief thought went through my mind of turning off and stopping by to say hi on my way home.  My Dad would have appreciated the unannounced visit and insisted I get something to eat and sit and rest before I continued on my way home.

Damn.

I still miss him.

untitled post (because I couldn't think of what to title it)

I was in the car today with my brother and we were looking for some place to eat. (Didn't figure on as many places being closed today as there was.) I'm not even sure what he said, but when he said it and than tugged on the brim of his baseball cap I "saw/heard" my Dad. He sounded so much like him in the phrasing of his words as much as the sound and than the tug was just something I had forgotten my Dad did until that moment. You couldn't really call it deja vu, but I actually had to not say anything for a moment, the feeling of my Dad was so strong at that moment.

Happy Birthday Dad

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a few thousand words about my Dad. Today would have been his birthday.

This is my Dad's parents, my grandparents. I was never that close to them. As a small child we lived in New Jersey where they lived, but after we moved down south we didn't see them that much and my Dad and his Father weren't that close. My Grandfather wasn't the nicest man in the world, but my memories of him are sitting in his lap while he read the funnies to my brother and me.

This is the earliest picture of my Dad that I have. I really have no idea how old he is here, but he's pretty young. Ready to take on the world.

This is probably from when we lived in New Jersey. That's me and the little tyke is my brother with my Dad.
I'm not sure where we were for this picture. I'm assuming Memphis from the age of me and my brother. That's us with my Mom and Dad. Notice how my Dad had pretty much the same hair style throughout these pictures.

A Christmas picture with my Dad and me and my brother. My Dad was not a suit wearer. I can't remember the times I've seen my Dad in a suit outside a wedding or something similar. The little Christmas figure hanging to the right of my Dad, we had that for years, I remember hanging it up till I was past my teens. It was just a plastic leaf figure with a round head, I didn't even remember it till I was looking at this picture.

I'm pretty sure this was from when we were in Florida. I want to say St. Augustine, but not completely sure. That's my brother, me and my Dad holding my sister.

My Dad at work. He was an aviation ordinance man, which meant he was responsible for arming the plane.

My Dad as a sailor. He spent over twenty years in the Navy and served proudly.

This is my Dad and Mom from his retirement. I remember this because I actually got to go. He retired not long after I graduated, so I didn't have school when it happened. It was actually quite a moving event.

This was at my Grandmother's house in Tennessee. My Mom lives close enough to this house now that she can see it from her porch. That's my Grandmother in the rocker, my Mom, my Dad and my sister. I remember this house with so much great memories, it's a shame no one in the family kept it up. Now it's falling apart.

This was right after my parents moved to Mississippi. They had just built the porch at the back of their home. That's me in the cool shades, with my Dad, brother and sister.

Again from Mississippi with my Dad, me, sister and Mom. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Again from Mississippi. My brother, Dad, his sister - my Aunt Bop, my sister and me.

One more from Mississippi. My brother with my niece in his lap, me behind them, my nephew on the ground, my Dad and my Mom with her cool hat behind him and their dog.

Father's Day

I've written so much about my Dad that I figure that there's nothing left to write. But as long as I can remember I guess there'll be something to write about.

I remember the first time I saw him cry. I had to be around ten or so, because my sister was probably around 3 or 4. My sister was born with spina bifda and especially as a child was in and out of the hospitals. When she was born she was flown to Walter Reed in Maryland. I remember being in the kitchen when my Dad came home from the hospital, my sister was back in, she had a seizure and they were keeping her over night. He was telling my brother and me about my sister's seizure. He said her tongue swelled up and she was turning blue and than he couldn't go on...he was crying.

I remember he'd get so mad at my brother or me when we'd call my Mother "her or she", like if we said something like "she did..." He'd get mad and tell us that wasn't a her or she that was our Mother.

I remember when we were visiting his parents and sister up in Newark New Jersey. I was probably in my mid teens than. We were all talking and joking about something. I made a comment about his height, my Dad was a fairly short man, and he said "Just remember dynamite comes in small packages." Without missing a beat I replied "So does silly putty." And he laughed so hard.

I remember later, when my Mom and he were both retired and living down here. If my Mom went shopping he'd go with her, and while my Mom and sister were traveling through the stores in the Mall he would sit on a bench in the Mall reading a book, waiting for her.

I remember him never saying a bad word about his Father, even though years later, when my brother and I were old enough to understand we learned that his Father was an alcholic and would abuse him. But as kids we just knew he was our Grand Pa.

I remember him getting up early, like around six in the morning, all the time. Even after he was retired from work. He'd get up and make himself a cup of tea and go sit out on the porch and just watch the world wake up.

I remember as a kid sitting in the car with him as we went somewhere and asking him questions and thinking he knew the answer to everything.

Happy Father's Day Dad.

Late Memorial Day

I missed posting Memorial Day. I was up at my Moms and she doesn't have Internet access, but I still find I need to post something. My Dad was in the Navy for twenty five years. He spent part of his time overseas when he was younger in Europe. Every year he would spend at least two weeks in the summer of sea duty, where he had to go aboard an aircraft Carrier. He was an Aviation Ordiance and the a Chief.

Where my Mom lives now she is pretty much out in the country. The town she lives in has less than a thousand people in it. The town next to her is Middelton. They have they Veteran's Wall, where everyone from the area that served in the military is up on their wall. Each veteran has a brick. The one above is for my Dad.

Happy Birthday Dad

My Dad was raised Catholic. His parents arrived in this country from Ireland and settled in New Jersey. For a year or two when I was very young we lived up North, but the rest of the time we lived in the South. We would take trips up to see my Dad's parents now and than, but I don't remember a lot about them. My Dad didn't get along with his parents that great. His Dad was an alcoholic and was not above using force to get his point across. Now I don't remember any of this from my Grand Dad, he was just this big old guy that was as friendly as could be. But I didn't grow up with him. So when my Dad was able to he joined the Navy and shipped out. It was while he was stationed in Memphis that he met my Mom. Shortly after getting married he got out of the Navy for a short time, but than ended but in the service.

My Mother was born and raised in a town with fewer than five hundred people about a hundred miles outside of Memphis. I remember when visiting her parents as a kid that they still had an outhouse. Her parents I remember a lot better, we lived in Memphis for about five years and would visit them regularly. My Mom's Dad was one of the kindest and nicest men that ever lived. Coming from the South my Mom was raised Southern Baptist.

You would have thought such a combination might prove volatile, but I never saw my parents fight over religion. Mainly because I never really saw my Dad care about it one or the other. When I was probably around six or seven I remember he used to keep something hanging from the rear view mirror on the car and he would sometimes cross himself. (Sorry I am lost with the Catholic Religion so I have no idea what it was.) But even that soon faded from his actions. My Mom took over the task of bringing religion into our lives.

It was never shoved onto us, my brother and me and later my sister. My Mom always made sure we found a church whenever we'd move and we'd go every Sunday to Sunday School first and than church services. My Mom would always start off going with us, but once we were established she would only visit on certain occasions. I think my parents thought it important to provide us with religion and a church. At home it was never really talked about, we didn't pray before meals or really even talk about God that much, if at all.

All three of us have turned out differently in our religious beliefs. My sister is still a regular church goer, church is a large part of her life. My brother believes but doesn't attend church. And me, I guess I ended up the heathen, the one that doesn't believe. The last time I was in a church was for a friend's wedding.

So it was kind of surprising that during the last decade of my Dad's life he started to find his religion again. When they lived in Mississippi he found a Catholic church (no small feat in the middle of the Baptist belt) and started attending regularly. He never talked about it, but most Sundays he would go. In fact he and my Mom were re-married in the Church. My Mom never went to church with him, she went to her church, but she was willing to have her marriage sanctified by the Catholic Church.

When they moved to Tennessee he found a new church and began attending. When he started getting sick and spent so much time in the hospital the Priest would pay regular visits with him, giving him confession. The Priest would call on my Mom and visit her to make sure she was doing ok. I know my Mom came to find a great comfort in his words and visits.

As my Dad got sicker and knew he was dying he would talk to the nurses about God. They told us he would ask them if they believed in God and what they thought. He wouldn't try to push his beliefs off on them, he just wanted to spend a few minutes in the comfort of words and thoughts he believed in.

When he died my Mom's Pastor gave the eulogy at the church, but than my Dad's Priest gave one at the gravesite.

As I've said I'm not a very religious man. I find my religion in music and the written word. Today would have been my Dad's 74th birthday. You think it would get easier, but the hurt will never entirely vanish and it shouldn't. I miss him in the most mundane things, when I realize that I can't call him up and complain about how moronic Sarah Palin is. That was another change in my Dad, he was a lifelong Republican but towards the end of his life he became a champion of Bill Clinton and he hated W. with a passion.

The song is hymn for my Dad, Bob Dylan singing one of his most beautiful and religious songs "Every Grain of Sand."

My Dad's Grave

Of course I had to visit My Dad's grave. They've added the tombstone since I was there last.

Church Next to Cemetery

This is the church next to Raimer Cemetery. Mom says it's not used today, but it's still part of the cemetery. This was where they used to go to church. Now they use it for things like Mother's Day where everyone comes to visit the graves and they have a big outdoor lunch. My Mom has spent a lot of time cleaning and working on this building in the last year.

Raimer Cemetery

This was the cemetery my Dad is buried at. Lots of Dixons are buried here, which is my Mom's family. And those that aren't Dixon are related to her in some way or another. I saw the grave of this man I remember from when I was a kid and visiting my Grandparents. He ran a little general store and was in a wheelchair. He had a tractor fall over on him and he lost his legs. He was always a nice man and I always remember stopping to see him, he was an Uncle to my Mom. It's not a big cemetery and there are some tombstones that date back at least a hundred years there.

Song Missing From Yesterday's Post

I wanted to add this song to the post about my Dad yesterday but couldn't get Life Logger to work. So I'm putting it here today. It's by Alison Moorer with her sister Shelby Lynne live.

One Year Ago Today

It was a year ago today that my Dad died. I still miss him.

Father's Day

These pictures are from the last Christmas I had with my Dad. I drove up on Christmas Eve and was able to spend the week with him, if anyone works in retail will know how hard it is to get off at the time, but my boss knew the situation and let me have the week off. My brother and niece and nephew were there too. They managed to get there a few days before me. I left around midnight to drive up there, I knew I had to get there before too early in the morning. My Dad was like a kid at Christmas now. I remember when my brother and I were kids, waking up at six in the morning and running in their bedroom to try and get our parents up. They were always pleading for just a little more time to sleep. Now the roles have been reversed. My Mom and Dad are up at sun up or earlier, reading to start Christmas day.

I get there around six in the morning and I actually was there before anyone woke up. My niece opened the door for me and Buffy. Buffy ran in to let my niece play with her than she went looking for my Dad. My Dad was in bed and Buffy was all tail wagging wanting him to get up. By this point he had been sick for a few months, the cancer came back at the end of the summer, so he wasn't all that strong.

The picture above is one of my favorite pictures of me and my Dad. Christmas was wonderful and no one wanted to leave. Within a few months we all were back up there as my Dad went into the hospital. He got out again, but was back in before long. The cancer started out in his colon, went to his liver, lungs and brain. Sometimes he didn't know where he was, he would think he was back in the Navy.

This is my first Father's Day without him. Every Father's Day I would call him and he would act like the day was no big deal, but I could always here the pride and love in his voice. My Dad was a short man, around 5'4", but in my memory when I'm with him I'm always looking up at him.

The LIttle Things

It's the little things. Time will go by and I won't think too much of him and than some little thing will make me think of him. Tonight after I was getting out of the shower I pushed the button for the cleaner that hangs on the shower, it's one of those things that hangs a bottle of some type of cleaning fluid upside down over the shower. When you finish your shower you push the button and it shoots the fluid out, helping to keep the shower clean. As I pushed the button I thought about telling my Dad about buying this thing. He'd get a kick out of it. That's one of the hard things, just calling to tell him the little things, the things that don't mean much, but in the telling mean so much.

Dreaming

I have a tendency to not remember my dreams. I'm not going to say I don't dream. It's been pretty well established that everyone dreams to one extent or another. But in the morning when I wake up I'll catch a fleeting glimpse of my dreamscape and than it drifts away into the mist of nothinginess.

This morning I woke up remembering a dream and even now still remember parts of it. It was one of those weird dreams where there was a lot of people from work and we where in a house in the middle of nowhere and talking about going to the University of Montana. I walked outside and was alone in fields with rolling hills and I heard my Dad speak to me. I woke up as I was calling out to him "Dad?"

That's all I remember. It's the first time that I can remember dreaming about my Dad since he died this last summer.

The Year of my Dad

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my Dad. It was taken from the Christmas before last. It was his last Christmas and the last real time I got to spend with him before he went in the hospital. It wasn't long after Christmas that he fell and broke his shoulder and ended up in the hospital and never came home. This was a good Christmas. My brother and niece and nephew all were there, so we all were together. My Dad was feeling pretty good, he wasn't jumping through any hoops but he was getting around and was pretty much his old self.

It's strange how thoughts of my Dad can come on me at the oddest times. I can be thinking of something that has no connection to him and suddenly my mind will flash on him. Many times I'll think of what he would say about something. I just bought one of those digital picture frames and I was thinking how much he would like it. My Dad always liked the newest gadgets.

It's still hard for me to write about him. You think missing someone would get easier with time, but it doesn't. You just find a way to move on.

A Veteran

My Dad joined the Navy when he was 17 years old. He didn't join to see the world or to serve his country. At the time it was a job and it was a way for him to escape an abusive relationship at home with his Father. He spent four years in the Navy and ended up in Memphis where he met my Mom. He didn't re-enlist after that first four year stint. He drove a bus for awhile but decided that he wanted to be in the Navy. He rejoined. He was an aviation ordinance man, which meant he loaded the bombs and missles on the planes. He traveled through Eurpoe and the Mid-East while he was in the Navy. He spent some time off the shores of Korea. While I was growing up every year he would spend two weeks aboard an aircraft career. He raised up in the ranks until he ended up as a Master Chief. I remember the day he retired. I was out of school, just graduated so I went with him and my Mom to the ceremony. They ring a ship's bell to "ring" him out of the service. He tried not to let anyone see it but I could see the tears in his eyes as he bid an end to a big part of his life. For my Dad he was a sailor for his whole life. I think that is part of the reason he had such a dislike to our current President. He hated the fact that Bush was sending so many young men and women into harm's way. Towards the end of his life he would literally break down in tears he would get so worked up about these brave service men and women dying for reasons that Bush never could make clear.

For this day I'll remember a veteran that I still miss.

My Dad's Birthday

Today my Dad would have been 72 years old. It seems like a lifetime already since he died this summer and than again it seems like it was only yesterday that we were all sitting in his hospital room with him. His last week he never gained consciousness but he was never left alone. He would have been surprised by all the people that spent time in that room visiting him. He was always the type of man that thought he didn't make much of an impression on others. His hospital room was literally packed with people, at one point I counted almost two dozen people in the room, wanting to say their goodbyes and offer any comfort they could. Aunts and cousins were spending the night, not wanting to go home. Friends drove up from Mississippi and New Orleans to see him. Nurses from the other part of the wing where had been transferred out of once it was evident he wasn't going to recover came by to visit with him. One nurse broke down in tears after seeing him and talking to him. He might have been surprised by all the people he touched, but I wasn't.

This month, next week actually, also marks the wedding anniversary of my parents. This would have been their 49th year together. In those 49 years I don't think they hardly ever spent any time apart, except for when my Dad was in the Navy and had to go out on his two weeks on a ship. But otherwise they were always together. No matter what they were always there for each other, even if it was just running down to the store and my Dad would sit in the car while my Mom went in to shop. Or when my Mom went to the Mall to do some shopping my Dad would take a book with him and sit on one of the benches while my Mom hit store after store. Don't get me wrong, they weren't all lightness and happiness, they could fight. Boy, do I remember the fights they had when I was growing up. Sometimes the simplest thing could set one of them off. I remember being at Six Flags on vacation and they got in a big fight in the middle of the park. But they always made up. I remember walking in on them kissing and hugging so many times when I was a kid.

My Dad never graduated high school. It was something he was always ashamed of, but at the times circumstances stood in his way. His Dad abused him, and it was after one of these beatings that my Dad left home to join the Navy. My Dad rarely talked about his problems he had at home and never when my brother and I were smaller. His parents lived in New Jersey and except for a little time when my brother was born up there we never lived up North, but he would bring us up there to visit our grandparents as often as possible. He let us know his Father as a nice old man who was our Grandfather and not as the person that drove him out of his own house with beatings. In later years I think my Dad forgave my Grandfather as much as you can for something like that.

My Dad accomplished what many in his situation cannot. Children that are abused have a strong tendency to grow up as abusers. It's all they know of love so for them it doesn't seem strange that they abuse their own kids. My Dad had a temper and my brother and I got our share of whippings, my parents were never the type to spare the rod, but we were never abused. We were never beat, a whipping on the butt is not abuse. I remember once my Dad went to smack me on the butt and somehow with me trying to move out of the way he accidentally hit me on the side of the face. His face turned white and he was immediately sorry, he would never have struck one of us on the face. He couldn't believe he had done it, even though it wasn't his fault, it was mine for trying to move out of his reach. My Dad broke the cycle of abuse. This was something we never realized as children but as adults when we knew the story we realized how important and hard this was.

As I said before my Dad never graduated high school and always thought he wasn't as smart as other people. My Dad was a self taught man. He loved to read. He was always reading a book. He was always trying to learn things. He made sure my brother and I knew how important it was to have an education. When I was a kid he enrolled me in a book club for kids, I don't think I was more than five or six at the time. Reading was always one of my greatest strengths. I remember being tested when I was in sixth grade for reading skills and I was already reading at college level. My Dad never tried to censor what we read. I never had to ask if I could check a certain book out of the library, it I could it read I was allowed to. I remember once when a babysitter, I was probably around 8 or 9 - my parents would get someone to watch us when they went out at night - and the babysitter, probably a high school girl saw a book I was reading and was surprised that my parents allowed me to read it. I don't remember the book, but I just remember her commenting that she wouldn't be allowed to read that book and she was a lot older than we were.

I learned tolerance from my Dad. I grew up in the sixties and seventies. When Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis we were stationed at the Naval Air Base in Memphis. My Dad had shore patrol the night of the murder. He spent that week in downtown Memphis patrolling the city. There were lots of changes going on during this time and a lot of white people were not happy with these changes. My Dad never used foul language or the N-word to describe black people. They were just people as far as he was concerned. You don't think about things like that, but years later you realize how much of an impression they make on a young mind and how they affect how you think about other people.

My parents shared the work load at home equally. I guess that's how I've come to my acceptation of an equality of the sexes. The last ten years or so while my Dad was in the Navy he would get home around three or four in the afternoon. My Mom normally didn't get off work till five or six. So by the time she got home dinner would be cooked and waiting for her arrival. My Dad found he loved to cook, so much so that my Mom ended up rarely cooking. My Mom recently made a comment when I was up there visiting that she had to learn to cook again, she hadn't needed to while my Dad was alive. But it went beyond cooking, my Dad would clean and vacuum, but that was always an iffy proposition with my Mom who's a neat freak cause no one cleaned like she expected. My Mom learned how to build things because that was what my Dad liked to do, so it wasn't unusual to see them both out putting up a fence or building a porch. They build the porch for my home and after it was completed someone offered them a job building porches for their company.

My Dad loved to build. He loved wood. As a child he build bunk beds for my brother and me. There wasn't much he wouldn't try his hand at building. He could spend hours in his shop building things. I don't think he was ever happier than he was when he had built something.

My Dad was a short man. It was always a joke with us. He would always say that dynamite came in small packages and I would respond with so did silly putty. Even though I always knew my Dad wasn't taller than 5'4" when I think of him I still imagine him towering over me, who's 6', and me looking up at him. For me my Dad will always be a giant among men.

Graduation Day

Now this is an old picture of me and my Dad. It was taken on my graduation day from high school. God, that was so long ago.

Pictures

These are pictures that were made the day of my Dad's funeral. The first picture is of my Brother and my nephew at my Mom's house.This was at the church for the funeral. My nephew, me and my brother.
All the pallbearers: my cousin Rabbit, my nephew, my brother, my cousin Tony, my Uncle Troy and me.

Present to My Dad

On my last trip up to see my Mom last month I brought back a few things with me. The above book was my Dads. I'm not that big a Sherlock Holmes fan. I enjoy the stories, but that's about the extent of it. My Dad loved Sherlock Holmes. This book is a huge two volume collection that has all the novels and short stories about Sherlock Holmes that was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It has notes on all the stories, from what certain words mean to fashions to what things meant in the time that stories were written. It's two big books. This was the first really expensive gift I ever gave my Dad for Christmas. I was just out of high school and working my first real job, going to college, earning a big $2.35 a hour. This box was, I think, $50.00. For me at that time, this was a major purchase. But I remember being so happy when I bought it, knowing how much my Dad would love it. And he's kept it over the many years since than. My Dad loved to read and he would read a lot, but he would donate his books to a local library or salvation army or whoever needed reading material after he was done with them, he didn't collect a lot of books. (Unlike me who has trouble parting with any book.) But my Dad kept this book over the years and the moves they made. My Mom was asking if there was anything of my Dad's that I would like and I realized that I wanted this book. It's a little piece of my Dad.