Memories of My Father

I'm not quite to senior status yet, but I feel it coming in the aching of my bones.
I do wonder sometimes if I'll make it to my Father's ripe old age.
And would that even be a good thing for me? We lived very different lives.
He was a preacher, and I was the rebel, for years we spoke little, if at all.
However, we had some wonderful times before I came of age, and also after I really grew up.
His death, over six years gone now, caused me a great deal of pain.
My sister wanted their house, and so, didn't call me as he lay dying, asking to talk to me.

I was not invited to the funeral, because I knew too many nasty things about her.
The last thing she wanted was for me to air her dirty laundry at her church. Something I'd never do.
This was all discovered just before my mother passed away less than a year later.
We had phone conversations, and she always knew my voice, even just before dementia took her.
I wasn't invited to her funeral, either. At least this time I knew why. Simple greed. I left her everything but me.
That year, my sister lost her father, mother, and only brother. We've not spoken since.

I miss him greatly. In our later years together, we talked often on many subjects.
No longer, though, can I bounce theological questions off him, as agnostics are wont to do.
But yesterday was the very first time I was ever glad he had already passed on from this world.
He had grown up in Paris, and in my youth, had taken me there to see all the wonders.
The Eiffel Tower, The Arc de Triomphe, The Louvre we saw on that trip, and of course, Notre Dame.
I wept as it burned, and knowing the fires he saw there during WWII, it might have broken him.

I love you so much, Dad.
I only hope wherever you are...
You didn't have to watch it.


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