Happy Birthday Dad!

Dear Diary,

Beginning and ending the week with old photographs of my dad.  He would have been 99 today had he lived.  This is a photograph of him at 18, in 1936, with his older sister Stella. My dad was quite the dresser back in the day and I think he looks smashing in his three piece suit.  He hadn't started to wear glasses yet but he still has that wonderful smile.

I guess it doesn't matter how long a parent has been dead, you still think of them as very close to you...as if they have just stepped out of the room for a minute.  Or, in my dad's case, gone downstairs to his workshop in the basement.  He could make anything and I was always in awe of his talents.


It is one of the great ironies of life that we never fully appreciate a person until they are gone.  After our grandparents and parents leave us we sometimes feel a sense of abandonment.  It seems such an unnatural state even years later but we go on and eventually we become their best intentions for us if we are lucky.  I often thought that we struggle our whole lives to distance ourselves from our parents only to find we end our lives desperately wanting to reconnect.  Thank you Dad...I still remember.