This Is Going To Be A Lot Harder Than I Thought

Yes, that's me. Karen is in the background. We were on a road trip to California (at least that's how remember it). I used to do this same dive off the high dive and my Dad would laugh and laugh. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought because my memories turn out to be factually incorrect and as of yet I haven't figured out how to spell check on Blogger.

I am emotionaly fragile right now because tommorrow I must put down my beautiful Golden Retriever Gracie. Last year I had to do the same for her brother Henry, who I still miss and may never get over. I don't think we ever "get over" the loss of the ones we love. We just learn to live with it. I mention all this because I just read the first of a box full of letters my father had written to my mother and after scanning and posting it I realized I barely remember and maybe never knew the man my father really was.

In the first year they were married my Dad left Maryland on a month long trip to visit his family in Alabama and to play in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fl. He wrote her every day. Can you imagine? I was randomly filpping through the letters and grabbed this one beacuse it was written on Christmas.

It opens with him lamenting not being able to reach her on the phone for their first Christmas. He had already tried for hours to get through and said he would continue to try, "That's all I need to make my Christmas complete." He goes on to tell her about her alcoholic father in law who has been teasing him about writting his wife every day. He loves his Mom's home cooking and is excited his little brother Cecil will be coming to the game.

What struck me was that his letter sounded just like he talked and his hand writting is the same as in the notes he had written me. He is 21 years old writting a letter to his wife from a home he left five years earlier and he sounds like the man he would be for the rest of his life.

While looking for pictures of him recently I realized I don't have very many of them. As a Dad I now realize why, he was taking all the pictures. As I look at the pictures I've taken recently of my little ones I understand how much he must have liked this one of his "Biddy Buddy" flying mid-air on the way to yet another perfect belly flop. I remember hearing him telling stories about me doing high dives with a float belt and not even getting my backside wet.

The one thing I learned from the news article I posted was that their only loss in his four years was only by one point.