Wow. June 9 was my last post. I was going to try to practice getting better about this, since it's another one of the things I want to do in retirement, if I live that long. But more than a month has gone by. The good news is that my retirement count down went from 233 days to the current 185 days. That's pretty cool. Still seems a long time away though.

Having a nice summer. Great weather for the petunias. We've had a ton of rain and some nice hot baking sun. The flowers love that. I'm going to put pictures on Facebook, so I can look back at them in future years and sigh.

So, I'm going to paste in a little thing I wrote for Father's Day this year. It's just a bit of a remembrance about my father. He wasn't a perfect man by any means, but he was smart and funny and he did his best with what he had to help my mother raise two unruly daughters. God bless his heart and may he rest in peace.

Here it is:

My Dad

My Dad loved to get presents. His eyes would sparkle like a little kid's on Father’s Day or his birthday when it was time to open presents. He loved gift cards and lottery tickets and baseball caps and funny shirts. He loved puzzles and books and almost anything related to the Second World War. He loved chocolate and shortbread cookies. If all else failed, you could buy him socks. He loved it all.

On Christmas day, for as long as I can remember, my Dad was the first one up in the morning. Mom recalls him saying every single year, “It’s time to wake up the girls.” He loved to watch us open our presents, but he was always just as excited to tear the paper off his own gifts.

Now, on special occasions in the summer, we take flowers to his grave. We stay and visit for a while. In the winter, we straighten up his Christmas wreath and his little Christmas tree. And we just wish we could see his eyes sparkle one more time over a gift-wrapped package with his name on it.

That's it. That's all there is. One little fact about my Dad. We miss him a lot. And he wasn't ready to depart this mortal coil. Even at age 88 and with a mushy old heart that wasn't working very well, and after a lifetime of living for the moment, he would have tried to bargain with the Lord for just one more year. But he didn't know that was his last day, so the Lord caught a break. Dad was sitting in a chair, waiting for his physio therapist to come for some therapy they were doing. She looked over at him, and his head had drooped toward his chest. She called his name and he didn't answer. She went over and could see that he had passed out. She called the paramedics and they tried to restart his heart, but to no avail. My mother was called out of hymn-sing, where she had just a little while before waved goodbye to Dad as he headed out the door to physio. "See you later, dear," he said with a little smile and a wave. How prophetic was that? They will be together later. Much later, I hope. Mom misses him terribly, but she's fortunate in that she dreams about him so often. She says he comes to her in her dreams about three or four nights out of seven. They dance and travel and argue and he even hugs and kisses her. So Dad's been gone since Nov. 20, 2007. It will soon be three years. Hard to believe.