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| Above, my dad and me in 1993. |
Today marks 24 years since my dad passed away from lymphoma.
While it seems like only yesterday, 24 years is nearly a quarter century long. That will come next year.
I've noticed a couple of things since I retired. I think of my parents more often. Time seems to go faster after someone passes on.
I still drive his 1989 Mustang. It was his last car. I have recently found things that he left behind: silver coins in a strongbox and guns in gun cases that I thought were empty.
On the night he died, I was taking a nap before I had to go to work during the night shift. I suddenly awoke with a gasp. It turned out to be at the same time he passed. Minutes later, my mom called to tell me that he died. I have since read that others have had this happen to them.
I will later pour myself an "adult beverage" and offer a toast to his memory.
2 comments:
Hi Armand, Thanks for the nice post. If one had a good relationship with a parent, I think the bond remains for life. My dad passed on almost fourteen years ago, and as for you, the time has passed incredibly quickly. I think of him and my mum often, and again like you, more so in my retirement. I suspect that's because I have reached the stage of life where he was when we really became closest, so I wish he could be here to share some of the things we now would have in common were we actually contemporaries. In short, I have come to truly enjoy the same things that he enjoyed in his retirement, and since we were good friends, it would be nice to be able to share those things with him now. Just to sit and talk politics and have a drink together, or a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun before heading off to bed, that sort of thing. I'd like to have his take on the state of the world today, though I strongly suspect I know what it would be. Anyway, thanks again. Though I never knew him, I'll raise a toast to your dad a little later today. To have a son like you he must have been a good guy.
J.D.: Thanks for your thoughts. They echo how we were in our later years. A couple of years ago, my friend Mitch and I were riding around Lake Havasu in Mitch's Slingshot. His dad and my dad became good friends through us during our junior high days. I mentioned that I could picture our dads trying out the Slingshot. My dad would be driving as his dad had bad eyes. They both would be helping us with mechanical work on our cars. We learned about car maintenance through them for the most part. My dad would be 95 this year. I had my toast to his memory (brandy and egg nog).
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