OK, last comment on Father's Day

I'll get more into the entertainment portion of this blog eventually I swear, but need to wrap up this years Father's Day.

I briefly mentioned in an earlier post that this was my first Father's Day without my Dad.

Honestly, I've had a lot of Father's Days without my dad. No one's fault really. I'm bad about remembering Holidays so he, as well as most of my family, are use to getting cards in the mail from me many days after a holiday, birthday, anniversary, etc.

Of course, now that I'm a Dad, I was getting much better at remembering this one.
Unfortunately, only a few years after I became a Dad, I started losing mine.
My Dad wasn't around a lot physically while I was growing up. Parents were divorced when I was 10 I think and he traveled a lot before that.
But I'm not going to sit here and complain about being raised a poor black child with no father figure growing up on the hard streets of Someplace, USA. Partly because I'm not black and I grew up in a nice neighborhood. Okay, so mostly because of that. But my Dad was always just a phone call away and just knowing that was enough for me to feel close.

But after years of drinking heavy and more the result of being a heavy smoker, Dad was no longer getting enough oxygen to his brain and dementia set in. So our conversations no longer flowed logically and eventually I couldn't even get him on the phone.
He died February 28th.
I didn't see him his last 2 years on earth and talked to him maybe twice.

Because of that, I always told myself that he was basically already gone and felt like I had dealt with losing him on some level already.
But when you get the call from your sister who was able to be with him as he passed, that he was going to die any moment, the finality of it all is like Mike Tyson punching you in the stomach.
I know I'm 37 and supposed to be a responsible adult with my own family that I need to take care of, but my ultimate safety net is gone. I never really called on him to catch me, but knowing he would was all I needed. Now my net is gone.

I cried harder than I ever expected. Over and Over.

My oldest son who is 5 did his best to console me and tell me that my Dad was in heaven so I didn't need to cry. My youngest son who is 2 never got to meet my Dad and that makes me cry every time I think about it. My niece put together a video to be played at his funeral. Near the end is a part where my Dad is looking at a picture of my youngest son my sister showed him. I'm crying as I type, this is where I always feel Tyson's punch again.

Dylan, my oldest told me after Church on Father's Day that in Sunday school he learned when you pray you could talk to people in Heaven. So if I missed my Dad all I had to do was pray, and I wouldn't have to cry anymore. Dylan has no idea what he does for me and how much he means to me. He has no idea how much better his words make me feel. Saying "I Love You" was not a common thing between my Dad and I growing up. But thankfully, I made it a part of every conversation with him the last few years and I make sure it is said often between Dylan and myself and now Dalton as well.

So Father's Day is over, but I prayed and talked to Dad. And I told him I still love him.

This is the video from the funeral (and yes we corrected the spelling of February before showing it)