My Dad

By far this has to be the most difficult page for me to write. The reason being it brought back many painful memories while I was preparing it. There are so many things I want to share about my father but I don't want you to get the wrong idea about him. I pray that while you read this page you will keep in mind that it was written out of love by a daughter who misses her Daddy very much.

The childhood I had was not always an easy one. My dad was an angry man. My earliest memory of him is when he was being taken to jail for beating up on my mom. I remember crying and thinking that I would never see him again or that he would go hungry because he was only going to be fed bread and water while he was in jail. That didn't happen and he came home the very next day.

I remember many times when he was drunk. Some of those times he would yell at us and even throw things. Some of those times he was what I call a silly drunk and he would do something stupid like put his head through a glass window while pretending to be a race car driver. But not all my memories of my father are bad ones.

I can remember times when he would go out of his way to give us the things we needed even if it meant he would have to go without a new pair of work boots. I remember the Christmases when the gifts would stretch far from the tree and would take what seemed like forever to open. My dad would spend countless hours working on things for us. He would take my brothers to football games and wrestling matches. He even helped my younger brother to start racing motocross professionally.

One summer my dad even took me and my sister with him out of town to a job he was working on. He was a sheet metal construction worker for over 25 years and much of that time was spent working on jobs out of town. This particular year he was working in Fresno, CA. My sister and I camped out with him in our van. We went water skiing and cooked on a campfire for an entire week. It was so much fun.

But my fondest memory of my dad is when I was walking down the aisle after I had received my diploma upon graduation from college. He didn't care who got in his way. He was going to share in one of the proudest moments of his life and take me in his arms to show the world just how proud he was of his little girl. I didn't even get to speak to one of my professors because my dad didn't want to share the spotlight. But it didn't matter, because he was my dad!!!

I moved away from home shortly after I graduated. I only saw him a couple more times over the next few months. The saddest day of my life was when I was bringing home a boyfriend to meet my dad and we were met at the door and told that he had been killed in an accident.

We found out later that he had been drinking with the guys at a bar before he left to come home. He had been working out of town and was to return home for the Thanksgiving weekend. He never made it. I realized after it was too late that I really did love my dad. I am just glad that I had the chance to say "I love you daddy" when he called home the night before he was killed.

The holidays are very hard for me now. I don't enjoy Thanksgiving like I did as a child. Rarely do we have a big celebration. Sure we cook the usual food but we don't make a big deal out of it. My last memory of my father is sitting down at the funeral home making arrangements for his memorial service.

I can only hope that if you have ever been guilty of drinking and driving you think long and hard about doing it again. My dad would always say that he knew what he was doing and he was a good driver. All it takes is one mistake and everything is gone.