Give Thanks...Happy Father's Day, Dad

 One thing I love to do on holidays and days of remembrance/acknowledgements is check out social media. At least on my feed it's full of friends/family recognizing others, proclaiming their love and gratitude for the people in their lives. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's and Father's Days...seeing their posts renews my faith in humanity.

Like today...

Father's Day.

For me, the day is not about any gifts I may or may not receive (especially this year after just surviving a daughter's wedding...), nor is it about me, really. I think about my father and my wife's father.

They're both gone. It's a bittersweet day, thinking of what might have been.

Next year will mark several milestones for my father. He would have turned 100-years old. It will also mark fifty years since he passed away. I was eight-years old when he died. There's no way I could have realized at such a young age what his passing would mean to me throughout my life. As I age and experience life, I feel more and more my father's absence, and contemplate how life would have been for me and my family.

Still, even though he was only in my life a short time, his impact still affects me today. His impact affects my children and will hopefully continue for decades to come. Our lives are determined by how we react to the events that are put upon us. I know my life would have turned out differently had my father survived the cancer that took his life. I can bemoan the life I never knew, the man I barely knew, but my life is so much better because of the short life he lived. I'm so grateful for my father, a man I still idolize and love. One day--God willing, years from now--I'll have the opportunity to get to know him and thank him myself for everything he did for me and my family.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Sure do miss you.