Dad - One Year Gone

One year ago today, at around 7:30am, my dad died. It has been both a long and a short year since then. They say that time heals all wounds, and in a way I am sure that is true, but in other ways it is not. The passage of time has made it such that I do not feel his loss as a painful thing, but I do still feel it as a hollowness, a kind of emptiness that he is no longer in my life. And unfortunately, I will always now associate the Thanksgiving season with Dad's passing.

I am thankful that I had him for 44 years, and sad that I didn't have him longer. I am thankful that my children knew him at least a little, and that they will remember him in some way, but sad that they didn't know him as the vibrant man that I knew. I am thankful that he was a dedicated father, an involved part of my life, and a father in action and not just in words. I didn't always agree with him in many ways, and our relationship was strained at times (as many father son relationships can be), but I always knew that he cared, and that he was there for all of us.

I will also always have a pang of... I don't know... regret, I guess, that after all those hours at his bedside I wasn't there with him at the very end.

Thanks Dad. I miss you.

Dave has posted a nice note here.