I lost my Dad on September 14th, 2010. He suffered bravely thru a long battle with stage 4 prostrate cancer. This is my first Father's Day without a Dad to call. No talks about our respective yards and gardens. No advice on how to fix a leak under the sink. No reminiscence of my childhood long past and the decent man that raised me.
I have a distinct memory of one of those talks that a father has with his son from long ago when I was just a toe-headed boy: It was about this time of year and the street we lived on was one of those roads that were annually tarred and sanded (no one in the neighborhood wanted to pony up the extra money in property taxes to have the street paved).
I was hardly 3 or 4 years of age and we were both sitting on our front stoop, Dad with his morning coffee and me next to him after he called my name and waved me out to join him for his summer morning ritual.
They had just tarred and sanded the street and the smell of oil hung in the air so thickly that the odor was very near visible.
With both of us sitting quietly staring at our sparsely traveled street, me shirtless and my father sipping his coffee he turned to me with a simple but gentle admonition. An early life lesson from a worried Dad. He said, "Son, when crossing the street, be sure to look both ways before you do. I don't want anyone to run you over with their car....... if that happened, I would lose my only little boy and the best friend I have in the world and I don't want that to ever happen. Do you understand?" I nodded in agreement, naively unaware at the time that this would become one of the fondest memories of my childhood.
From that day to this, the smell of tar oddly brings a smile to my face.
So, for this Father's Day, my first without "Pop", I just wanted to tell him that I miss him and love him still....... So, here goes:
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