Happy Birthday!!!

April 6th, 2010


This day my father would have been 88 years old. He has been gone since January 1977, just months before his birthday that year. He was only 54 years old. At the time he died, I was 18 and thought 54 was old. I knew I’d miss him and it would be a long life without him.

Well, here I am just months from my 52nd birthday. Being in my 50s sure doesn’t feel so old to me anymore. I wonder if Dad had ideas and plans, hopes and dreams for the years when he could retire. Did he hope his life would somehow resolve and he might someday find peace and happiness? I wonder if he felt these feelings that are so much a part of my everyday thinking.

It would be so wonderful to be able to bake him his favorite rich, strong black coffee in the chocolate cake recipe with whipped peanut butter icing today, sing the birthday song, and search high and low for a gift for my dad. To sit across the table from him and see the sparkle in his aging blue eyes, would be a gift to me. I know that the woman I’ve become would be able to reach through some of his protective layers. Perhaps seeing the family he helped produce would have brought him some measure of joy.

Happy Birthday, Daddy…I wish you peace at last.





***Side note…My father died on January 6th, his birthday was April 6th.

                    My mother died January 23rd, her birthday was March 23rd.





Debbie ~ April 6th, 2010