Four Score and One

One of the great lessons of life is that there are some things that you don’t get over.  You just get used to them. 

My dad would have been 81 today. 

It’s been about four years since he died, but I still catch myself thinking “Dad would love to hear about this” or “What would Dad say about that?”  I picked up a wheat cent in change today, for example.  It’s from 1955, when he was in high school.  It’s in pretty good shape, actually.  That’s the sort of thing we’d share.

I share that interest with Oliver now and I share other things with Lauren, and that’s just how life works down the generations if you’re lucky.

The people you love never really leave you, because they become part of you.  They stay in your head and in your heart and you can hear them sometimes, as if they were talking to you.  Memories and lessons replayed in your mind, but that’s enough.  We live until the last person who remembers us dies and that’s as much immortality as you need, really.

Happy birthday, Dad.