This day, 8 years at around 8:30 am, my dear father passed away from a tough year long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS as it’s referred to today). It was the battle of his life although this man was a Marine, having served in the Korean Conflict, three times earning two purple hearts. Dad had scars, big fleshy obvious wounds from shrapnel taken in the shoulder. He also scar inside he kept well hidden. He was tough but he was gentle at the same time. He was also orphaned early in life with another brother and put in a Milwaukee orphanage to live until a foster family took him in to help work on their farm in Ripon Wisconsin. Three brothers, whose mother died at the early age of 32 leaving them to a father who had issues, (like drinking). One brother, my uncle Jim who was the last brother to leave us last year around Thanksgiving, was only 3 when my grandmother Adelaide died, and he was taken in by my grandfather Charles’s sister and raised. But whether raised by a single aunt or by the Nuns in the orphanage, it was not easy as a broken family.
There was always a terrible soft spot in my heart for my dad and his rough start in life. Being a boy of 6 without a mother and a rather haphazard father always makes me all the more proud and grateful of the kind of father he turned out to be. A gentleman, a hard working businessman, a good provider beyond his transition into civilian life. He was sensible and intelligent in his decisions, and took us places on vacations showing us the Canada and the US through our childhood. So many happy memories.
He deserves to rest in peace, now and always in our hearts and minds and in eternity until we meet again.
1 comment:
Your dad sounds lovely, though I would be forever heartbroken for his start in life too.
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