Happy Father's Day, Day....I Miss You!

Good Morning My Confidants

Happy Father's Day to all of you, and to all of you who have served honorably in that way.

I miss my father so much. He has been gone nearly twenty years, and that doesn't seem possible. How can that be? I can hear his voice if I can't always see his face. Thank God for photographs! Although he wasn't often photogenic. But sometimes, the photo was perfect!

Was he perfect? No. Who is?

I know I all but worshipped him when I was a kid.

So many memories....

When I was very, very little and he took me for a ride in his man-toy--a red convertible--with the top down. Just me and him because he was about to be deployed overseas for thirteen months with the Marines...

Oh, that was hard.

I remember him taking me to see Japanese monster movies like Invasion of the Astro-Monster (with Ghidorah, the three-headed monster--was I maybe five?) or The War of the Gargantuas (I must have been six?)....

Camp outs with the Indian Guides (not politically incorrect any more? do they still exist? did they change the name of the group?). The matching costumes mom made us with the red fringe. The shield he made for me with a gorgeously painted Thunderbird. To this day I believe it watches over me....

The giant train set in the basement.... Wow. It was the bigger gage. I thought it looked so real. He made mountains out of crumbled paper and then spray painted them with gray and white and black and it looked like rocks. There was even a tunnel for the train to go through.

Vacations all over the country...

Always being there for me...

And even when we went through our rough patch when I was in high school (and now I know there is rarely a parent who doesn't go through a rough patch with their high school kids), when I thought I hated you, that changed.

He needed to come stay with me a few days at my place a year or so after I moved out, when he left there were tears in his eyes, he apologized....

...and when I asked why, he told me, "For wasting years wishing you were something besides the son you are...."

That was it. We were healed. Forever.

And he was a parent that so completely accepted me when I came out to him and my mom, when I know so many men whose fathers rejected them. Kicked them out. Not me. He loved me and defended me.

He was there every step of the way.

I miss you, Dad. But thank you for giving me the years you did.

I love you with all my heart....and I am proud to share your first, middle, and last names.

I am so proud to be your Junior.

Near twenty years ago the world lost him.

He wasn't happy with me that last week. We had a disagreement about the fact I was refinancing the house so I could do some home renovations. He would call and I wouldn't answer because I didn't want to deal with all that.

And that's when the call came that he had very suddenly died, sitting watching TV. It was the emphysema. Gone. Just like that. But as terrible as it was, and how I wish I'd answered the phone so I could talk to him one more time....

...I never felt any guilt. Because I KNEW that I knew that I knew that in the instant he died he passed into a different kind of existence....he knew everything that was going on and respected my decision. He wasn't mad at me. He loved me.

The funeral was difficult. But when we drove up that winding West Virginia mountain and reached the graveyard, there were seven Marines in full dress uniforms, their golden buttons shining in the sunlight, and he got his twenty-one-gun salute.

But it's the love. The love I remember and the love that is still there and what LIVES in me right now.

Thank you, Universe.

Thank you for the amazing man who was...who is...my father.

Benjamin G Thomas...and am proud to be your Junior.

If you father is alive, and if you can, don't forget to tell him that you love him today. I wish that I could.

You know what? I'm going to anyway.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! I miss and love you forever!

Namasté,

G "Gentle Ben" Thomas...Junior