There is a big hole now in the place where my “daddy” was.
Yesterday he was on his motorcycle and was rear ended by another vehicle, which propelled him into the truck in front of him. So the accident was not his fault, but he is just as dead.
Medical personnel tried to revive him at the hospital but he had sever internal injuries, and by the time I got there he was gone.
I haven’t cried yet, although I got damp eyes once or twice, and that is puzzling me. I keep telling myself I haved to hold it together for my mother, and I don’t want to be a big baby and take attention from her. I’m the one who made most of the phone calls to family out of town and I stayed calm.
I’ve tried to compose a list of things to be thankful for, blessings as it were. If he’d lived he would have been a total invalid, and he would have hated that. He (Probably) had not time to comprehend what had happened. Dad had a strong religious faith, and is he did hear or feel anything, the next thing he heard was the Lord telling him to get up on his own two feet in Heaven. Dad"s heart meds had been giving him trouble and he had had some headaches lately so at least there will be no lingering pain. He will never suffer from dementia.
But oh I will miss him. I’m going to have to grow up now when it comes to taking care of my car, he’d always worked on that, or knew who to send me to. Same thing goes for work on my house.
I loved him more than any other man in the world, although we didn’t see eye to eye on things, especially politics. And he was disturbed when I changed relgigious denominations from what I grew up with. That didn’t make the love lessen though.
He was the best of fathers. I only got spanked twice as a kid, he knew I was a stubborn as he was, and the best way to handle me was to outsmart me.
I’m told when I was four, and first put in Sunday School, I kicked up a fuss and was behaving badly. Dad didn’t whack me or anything, he told me that I couldn’t go to Sunday School, I’d never get to be in the Christmas program, and so on. After that it’s said I wanted to go. Good reverse psychology there.
Something similar happened when I was eight. He was teaching me to count change, as I was now to get an allowance. I remember whining it was too hard and wanted him to do it for me. He said if I couldn’t count it I wouldn’t get the allowance, and suddenly counting was a whole lot easier.
The night my first nephew was born, his first grandchild, we sneaked down the corridor of the hospital to listen at my sister’s door. When he heard that baby wailing he turned to me and said "Did you hear that? Did you hear that? His eyes were at least 200 watt bright.
I was the oldest of three girls. My parents were married for over 62 years. My mom is trying to be brave but it’s hard for her. She doesn’t even really want to know who it was that struck my dad, although it will be a court case. We know through a grapevine that the driver was not under the influence of anything, it was probably just a second’s worth of inattention. And mom will press not civil charges, when she was asked about that she shuddered before she said no.
Sorry this is so long, but I just wanted to “talk to somebody”