Happy Birthday, Dad. We miss you every day.

11-7-09

When I arrived at Dad’s house on Monday morning, I noticed a new book lying on the counter next to the phone.  I recognized it right away because it was the same book I had chosen out of my library stack to bring with me.  Dad had started reading the two previous books by the same author while at my house in Madison this summer and I was looking forward to talking to him about them.  They are about life, love, and loss and set in small-town Northern Wisconsin.  Of course he loved them.

I have loved my Dad since he first met my Mom.  He would play Barbies and horses with me for hours and listen patiently when I admonished him for not playing Barbie “the right way.”  I had a wobble-headed Ken doll who always managed to try to look up Barbie’s skirt somehow.  I have never seem him move faster than when I put my pet rat on his back while he was lying on the floor watching MTV.  He must have still liked me, though, because I remember him reading me bedtime stories involving long Indiana Jones tales.  Dad would always try to skip a few pages while I was dozing off, but I’d always catch him and it became a game we played.  Once, when I was 10 I went out fishing with Dad and he pulled out and lit a cigar.  I asked if I could have one, too.  ‘Sure,’ he said, helping me light it.  This was no swisher sweet as he usually favored, it was a big, nasty, unfiltered monster.  I don’t recall how much of it I smoked but I’ve never been interested in smoking since then.

Dad gave me wonderful gifts – first his love, then his name, and maybe the best gift of all, a little brother.  Shortly after his birth, Dad and I kicked an exhausted Mom out of her hospital bed and made her photograph us lying on either side of little Monty.  We spent all night and the next day smoothing his head, which was cone-shaped after passing through the birth canal, into a rounder shape.  You’re welcome, Monty.

I was proud to represent Cadott as Nabor Days Queen from 93-94 and Dad often drove the float.  I am pretty sure I have been to every small, family diner/restaurant in the tri-county area.  Dad was a people person.  That was something about Dad that was continually reinforced in later years, too.  Dad had his own time for doing things.  If I was expecting him in Madison at say 5pm, I learned to broaden his ETA to more of a window, say between 5 and 8pm.  Dad would surely stop in Tomah at Goodwill to pick up things for the kids and of course he’d get into a conversation with someone he knew or didn’t know at a restaurant along the way.

Dad loved helping others.  I remember him collecting toys and school supplies for needy children at Christmas time.  He also treasured his bible study groups and friends he had met through Divorce Care.

Dad was especially pleased when Monty joined his first band.  A love of music had been so influential in shaping his life and he wanted to share that with his son.  He treasured his time and closeness with Monty and loved when they worked as a team with the DJ bookings and building projects.  They were truly best friends and Dad loved being so much a part of Monty’s life.

This year has been a difficult one for my family.  Dad has helped us so much in the last year that I know I have taken him for granted.  When I had my appendix out, he was there to help with the kids.  When Levi was in the ICU due to complications from H1N1 this summer, Dad was there.  When I needed to do job training this summer before school started, he came and stayed with us again.  Grandpa, or G-Pa, as my kids took to calling him after he wrote that as short-hand on their Christmas gifts one year, would entertain them with his drawing skills and would stay up late reading Little House on the Prairie and telling family stories.  

Dad, G-Pa, Richard, meant a lot of things to a lot of people.  He loved to entertain, he wore his heart on his sleeve, and he taught me a lot about what it means to love someone and what it means to love a place.  We are left to miss you but we know you are with God.  We know you are playing in your “Dream Band” and all the Angels are dancing.