Fathers

Fathers Day is coming around again, and I am sadly now without a father. More to the point, I am without MY father. It hurts.

One night this week I spent with my sister-in-law watching movies. We selected three seemingly unrelated films to watch. All three of them, it turned out, were about fathers. In the first one, two children with no father found a surrogate male role model in their wacky uncle. The second one involved a young woman trying to determine which of several men was her father before her wedding. She ended up with three wonderful fathers. The last film was about another young lady who went to live with her father, who was a bit cranky and set in his ways, but he loved her desperately.

All of this cinematic fatherness got me to thinking. My husband is in the peculiar circumstance of having two fathers, both great guys and wonderful dads. I have none. In fact, I haven't anyone even remotely resembling a father figure in my life now.

See, my dad was a huge presence, the hugest, really, in my life. There was no room for any other fatherlike entities, and I wouldn't have wanted one getting in the way. I never had a grandparent or aunt or uncle, or any of those other auxiliary relatives. I had a dad, a mom and a brother. And now I have no dad. Like I said, it hurts.

My dad was smart, kind, compassionate, fair, tough, funny, and he loved me more than anyone has ever or will ever love me. (My husband disputes this, but I know the truth. My father's love can't be outdone. Even by my dog.)

I miss him with every ounce of my being. Constantly.

But here I am, facing fathers day, wondering what to do with myself. My dad was a great one for bringing home strays--folks with no local family, someone needing a meal, whomever. He adopted people into our family life for a few days, or years, or forever. It was the kind of person he was.

Maybe I need to find a faux-father to adopt me, for a little while. Maybe it will dull the pounding, aching emptiness, at least for awhile. Maybe not. But it would be awfully nice to have someone kind of like my dad (but not precisely) around to do all the dad things with. I miss that.