Father's Day 2012

Dear Daddy,

It’s Father’s Day, June 17 2012.  For Empty Nesters tomorrow night, I’ve asked members to write letters to their own fathers, so here’s my example.  You have been gone nearly 27 years, but you are still much in my thoughts.  In my church classes, I often cite examples of things you did that illustrate what a good father and husband is or should be.  This is my opportunity to record them for my own posterity.

My earliest memories are of sitting in the big brown chair on your lap as you read to me my favorite narrative poem “Water Babies.”  You read it hundreds of times, but never refused to read it one more time.  I can still feel the soothing rumble of your deep bass voice as I lay my head on your chest. 

You worked for the Bureau of Reclamation in Boulder City, Nevada, at the top of Administration Hill.  You walked to work, so at the end of the day I would walk to meet you.  If you wanted time to unwind, you never showed it.  You were always happy to see me and hear about my own day.  After we moved to Phoenix, things changed, because you had to drive to work.  But as soon as you got home, every single evening, you washed your hands, put on an apron, and started helping fix dinner.  After dinner, you would dry dishes while one of your children washed – more time for one-on-one conversation with your kids.  That pattern never changed even after the last child left home.  You continued to help fix dinner and wash the dishes, to vacuum and dust, to shop for groceries or run errands for Mom.  You never in your life had an automatic dishwasher or automatic clothes dryer – you claimed you had four built-in ones.  As an adult, I realized you always used drying dishes and hanging clothes as an opportunity to spend time with your children. 

You were an intellectual and scholar in the true sense of the word.  Your entire college career, which included a Master’s Degree, consisted of night classes, because you had to work during the day.  But in addition to your degrees in Business and Public Administration, you were a student of the gospel and of literature, history, and politics.  You also had an amazing bass singing voice.  As we did the dishes or hung clothes on the line, or as we traveled in the car, we would learn songs, poems, Shakespeare monologues, scripture, and historical trivia.  I sang “Tell Me Why” with you at numerous events, and I think David can still recite “Thanatopsis.”  In addition to your formal education, you read voraciously – news journals, biographies, non-fiction, histories, and of course The Improvement Era and Ensign.  I honestly don’t recall a single instance of your answering “I don’t know” to any question I asked on any subject.  If in fact you didn’t know, you would say “let’s look that up.”  Mom claimed one of the reasons she married you was that she knew she would have smart children.  The other reason was that you could balance a checkbook, and she knew you would be a good husband and father.

What I remember most is your passionate love for our mother.  You always kissed her goodbye and hello as you came and went, patted her on the fanny every chance you could sneak, complimented her, praised her, and supported all her activities.  To the end of your life, we knew you did not merely love her – you were madly in love with her.  On a trip we once took together, you told me you considered her happiness to be the most important thing in your life, and that you had dedicated your life to making it so.  I never once heard you say an unkind thing either to her or about her.  No wonder her own last words before she died were “I want to go home – to be with Daddy.”