Today would have been your 66th birthday. I have a harder time dealing with your loss on the anniversary of your birth than I do on the anniversary of your death for some reason. People keep telling me it gets better. People are full of shit. Maybe it gets easier in time, but I don't think it ever gets better. Ritch and I were talking a couple of weeks ago (we've both been dealing with some weighty issues lately) and we agreed that the hardest thing is not being able to pick up the phone and pour our troubles out to you. You always had something to say to us, sometimes it was good advice, sometimes it was something that just made us laugh and feel better for having laughed about it.
Sundays are the days I miss you most. Our 6 AM phone conversations before I'd go to work when I was at home, or coffee and breakfast out when I was down visiting. The banter back and forth about the amount of milk and sugar that Ritch and I put in our coffee, bad puns, and jokes about what to do with a frozen 20 lb. turkey that you'd been given the night before Thanksgiving. No one gets the "but was it frozen" line now that you're gone. It's no fun having an in joke when I'm the only one who gets it. I still find myself picking up the phone to tell you something every once in a while.
I miss being able to pick your brain about problems at work. I wish I'd asked you how to pour a slab, how to fix dozens of things and the best way to sharpen a lawn mower blade. I find myself quoting some of the things you'd say, usually about 4-wheel drive SUVs and the people who drive them and your line about how any idiot can mount a plow on the front of their truck but not everyone knows how to use one. I wish I could tell you about all the things I learned from you and been able to put into practice. I frequently tell people "My dad taught me how to plow" with pride in my voice. I also know way more about bridge construction than anyone not in the trade should know. I remember you telling me to find out where the locals gather and to get my coffee there, to learn all the backroads in a new area because you never know when you're going to need to know where they go and I've put that advice to good use.
I miss your smell - Lucky Strikes, gasoline, and honest working-man's sweat. I miss the bear hugs out in the dooryard and you telling me to drive safe when I'd leave. I miss the love and pride that shone from your eyes when you'd talk about us to others. I miss riding backroads with Johnny Cash on the tape deck and listening to you tell me about our family history, even if I'd heard it a hundred times before. I miss stopping and watching deer in the fields at dusk and sharing the beauty in silence.
I feel your loss as a great ache, but I know that I wouldn't trade it for anything. It only hurts because I know what I've lost.
Happy birthday, Dad. I miss you.
