Father’s Day

14 Nur 163 B.E. – June 17 – 18, 2006 A.D.

It’s Sunday! It’s Father’s Day! There are several articles in the RJ on this theme, Dear Abby’s annual Father’s Day column, Steven Kalas’ Human Matters column, the comics, so on and so forth. All the articles are interesting and thought provoking, all well written and all bring me face-to-face with issues concerning my own father.

First, a little background, my parents were divorced when I was young. I have memories of my father before the divorce. I remember sitting on his lap while he read me the Sunday Morning comics. I remember sitting on the front porch of our house in Blackwell, Oklahoma and talking to my father in the evening. I remember going to the Kay County Fair with my father. I remember the family going to Burbank to visit my Grandmother and while we were there, I went to a little one-room schoolhouse. I do not remember every seeing my father again after the divorce.

I always wanted to see my father again one more time, but it’s too late now. He has passed into the next world. How do I know he’s dead? I read his obituary in a copy of a newspaper I retrieved from an archive, while looking for his name on the internet. I always wanted to see my father again, I always wanted to hear his voice one more time, I always …. I never got the chance. I will never be able to do that in this world, maybe in the next.

I have memories of my father, memories like old photos play across my mind. Memories are all I have of my father now, still snapshots of happy times spent with my father in them. There are lots of things I don’t know about my father, there are lots of questions I never got to ask my father, I never got to hug him one more time before he died. I miss my father I miss the closure of not seeing him one last time.

I have no doubt that I will see him again when I cross the bridge into the next world. His soul survived the death of his physical body; my soul will survive death of my physical body. I will see him again in the next world, I will hug him again, I will tell him I love him again. The one thing that I’m not sure I’ll ask him is why? Why I never saw him again after the divorce? I probably won’t ask the question because that may not be an issue then.

The only thing I can do now is say a prayer for the departed. I can pray for my father’s soul as it ascends through the worlds of God. Those are my thoughts on Father’s Day, June 18, 2006.