Today being Father’s day and the sermon at church and honoring of fathers , I have tried all day to write something about my father who I love dearly and left me way to soon. 

daddy was 21 when I was born which would make him 82 today. I was my fathers first born my grandparents first granddaughter, and I was born May 1st my father May 3rd so I was forever his “birthday present”. Mother and Daddy had two more children together my brothers that I love dearly and am not as close to  as I would like to be, no matter how hard I try. Mother went on to have more children with three living  my two adorable sisters and one brother. Daddy went on to have  five or six more with his second wife,  unfortunately they are alcoholics, in prison, committed suicide or have drug problems. I don’t know them well enough to remember their names but one she used to call me when she was drunk (most of the time) and want to argue and cry about how Daddy loved me more than her or he did more for me. Possibly I don’t know.

I do know that my father died May 19th, 2003 and I was unable to be with him when he passed and had the burden of directing the pulling of the plug and organ donation from a distance of some six hundred miles, that and making them wait until my uncle could take my grandmother to see her son even in a coma one last time. 

Daddy was in and out  of my life and my brothers more out than in and always in more so than mother in a lot of ways. Daddy was a total alcoholic, yet one of the best mill wright framing carpenters ever. He demanded large money large jobs like million dollar stables for Preakness winners, millwright work for world~renowned doctors and actors. But only when he was dry and sober which could be for two or three years at a time, then binge for months. Don’t get me wrong  I say dry and sober  meaning he would only drink beer  a six pack a night rather than a case. 

Daddy was hard on my brothers for he knew no  other way for that is the way he was brought up. I of course was
the lil princess and could do no wrong.  I just hid it rom him better than they did. LOL

The whole point of this ‘confession’ about my Daddy is that for as good as he was to me, as close as we were , he was mean to me as well when he was drunk. He would try and fight with me when I wouldn’t give him money  or call me horrible names when I wouldn’t buy him beer. I sent him to rehab twice and dried him out and he wanted me to do it a third time but I held off, he was in Kentucky working and he didn’t want to lose this big important client, it was too late he had pawned his tools, his truck was impounded, he had been in jail and he had been beaten, during the physical  at the jail they found a problem and at the expense of the state had him tested. Daddy had throat cancer, all those years of smoking non ~ filtered Pall Malls all his life and this was the consequence. they ended up taking his Larynx and then some. Daddy being Daddy was stubborn and refused to stay around long enough to be fitted for a voice box, he wanted out of jail and Kentucky. So to my house in Kansas he came. He wrote everything after that and I still have notes from hs last visit to my home.

Daddy went on to Colorado to the family home where my grandmother and his brother my uncle were, at this point my grandfather was in a nursing home. I visited often that next three years. Daddy had stepped out of the car and his hip snapped with bone going through his leg and in trying to brace himself he broke his shoulder and forearm shattering those bones too.Due to the excessive drinking he had taken to doing he did not heal correctly after surgery he was placed in a nursing facility where he was to be rehabbed. When my youngest daughter and I arrived in Colorado we walked into the facility and I immediately said this is not fit for any human and turned around walked out and found a facility  to take my father that day.  We stayed extra days in order to speak with his doctor he informed us that my father was a vegetable basically  with a diagnosis of a “wet brain” every brain cell was dead due to the alcohol. 

Daddy two years later fell in the facilities bathroom after an aid failed to check on him for more than an hour 
having had a heart attack, they brought him back twice there on the floor and once again at the hospital.
When they called to tell me i was shocked and angered and scared and so upset that I was ill at the time having just had three heart attacks myself and couldn’t get there to be with him. 
Daddy was brain dead and would not have known I was there anyway, but it haunts me did I do the right thing?
He didn’t have many organs not affected by  alcohol but he had his eyes so I donated them. did I do the right thing I don’t know. I had Daddy cremated and sent to me he has a very special place in my home but I will have this guilt for the rest of my life that I put him in that place where I thought he would get better care. 

I miss my Daddy and these holidays …Fathers Day, His Birthday, the day of his passing these days are the worst 
for I miss him so much and I wonder what a normal life with a father would have been like?  what would a normal life with parents been like? Questions in the heart of a sixty-one year old woman with emotions of a five year old when it comes to Daddy.