By Sally J Ride
Think about your father for a minute.
He is the first real man in our lives.
Male or female, your father is you first real male relationship any of us have.
He is the man that has tears in his eyes when he first lays his eyes upon you.
He maybe the man that is not present in your life.
Even in his absence he is still your father.
I lost mine this year.
He grew old and tired and just passed slowly and peacefully in the night.
I knew it was coming.
I said I was ready.
I just did not know when.
I got the phone call in the middle of the night.
I found that to be very profound.
How many times did I call out to my father for protection and reassurance after waking from a bad dream?
He always awoke from his sleep and darted in to my bedroom to reassure me "it was just a dream.'
After receiving the call, there was a calm, a quiet that settled over me.
I was alone; and it was okay.
The experience we all dread growing up or see coming towards us as our fathers slow down happened.
I was still here.He is the first real man in our lives.
Male or female, your father is you first real male relationship any of us have.
He is the man that has tears in his eyes when he first lays his eyes upon you.
He maybe the man that is not present in your life.
Even in his absence he is still your father.
I lost mine this year.
He grew old and tired and just passed slowly and peacefully in the night.
I knew it was coming.
I said I was ready.
I just did not know when.
I got the phone call in the middle of the night.
I found that to be very profound.
How many times did I call out to my father for protection and reassurance after waking from a bad dream?
He always awoke from his sleep and darted in to my bedroom to reassure me "it was just a dream.'
After receiving the call, there was a calm, a quiet that settled over me.
I was alone; and it was okay.
The experience we all dread growing up or see coming towards us as our fathers slow down happened.
I was handling it, as we say.
I lay still, feeling kind of numb.
I always thought I would cry or sob.
The tears they never did come.
I walked through the following week moving like a very directed robot.
I did what was expected.
I did what need to be done.
As the weeks and months have passed I find myself no so much missing my father as missing the man that I really didn't get to know.
There are flashes of words, pictures, and feelings that I can not relate to.
These are the pieces of the man's personality that I never was able to capture before because he was not a man; he was my father.
We know our fathers as dads.
Dads are different then men.
I never really considered the man that my father was in this world; not just in my life.
He was bigger and more important in this world than just my father.
I have come to learn through others the lives he touched through counseling them and supporting them through AA.
I have come to know a man that used to go and visit people in the hospital and never letting on he was there to anyone else in his life.
He was a quiet man of few words, yet he would go sit by the bed side of someone sick just so they would have someone with them.
He did not have to use his words.
Anyone who knew him knew that if that man was sitting by them he cared.
I have come to know a man that use to visit a family member and sit at their kitchen table and drink a cold glass of iced tea or lemonade.
He may not of had much to say, he was always content to listen.
He found people fascinating.
He always said he was a people watcher; he loved it.
He was so right in the fact he was not so much a people person that had in depth conversations; however he was a part of the conversation by being a listener to their stories and interests.
He was a reader.
He loved to read about other people's lives.
He was a man that felt like he had missed so many opportunities because of his alcoholism.
I wonder what he wanted to be?
I wonder what he would have been; had issues in his life been different.
I will never know that man.
I will only know of him through other people.
Other peoples words, pictures and stories of that man that the world had the grace of knowing; but to me he was just my dad.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sally_J_Ride
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