Dad!

20 years ago today my father passed away and its always been a tough month for me since. I mean the man basically made me who I am.

He was a tough Irishman raised on the run by a nomadic father who seemed to not be able to stay in one place. Born in the 1920s and raised during the depression he went to college when he could and then when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor tried to join the Marines to no avail. Something about flat feet. So he joined the Army. My Dad spent the "worst 4 years of my life" in Europe defeating Nazism.

Then he came back to the US, attended college in New York City and came to Omaha to stay put, unlike his father. And he raised a family.

My Dad never dwelled on the negative. He never talked about the depression (unlike my Mom who couldnt stop talking about it), he never talked about the war unless the story was funny, and he never seemed down. I know better now that Im old. He hid it. But that was him.

My Dad never lived long enough to see George W Bush (though he once called him an "empty suit"). He never lived long enough to see Barack Obama. And he never lived long enough to see this disgrace of a human currently in the Oval Office. Thank goodness, though he would probably disagree cuz he loved life.

My Dad was a libtard. A Hubert Humphrey Democrat committed to doing right, to civil rights and to treating people with empathy and decency. I miss my Dad every freaking day. I want to pick up the phone and see what he thinks about this fucked up world.

One story to end that sums up my Dad. Long ago in the 1970s, when my mother still smoked she had asked my Dad to bring her home a carton of Parliaments or Viceroys or whatever. When Dad got home the carton was open and one pack was missing. He had quit smoking years before so it wasnt him who took it. Mom said why is there a pack missing? Dad looked at her and said, there was a bum (thats what they called them back then) sitting against a wall downtown so I flipped him a pack. Mom couldnt understand that type of thinking. Dad understood. So did I.

That was my father.