Remembering Daddy

Today it is 23 years since my dad died of a heart attack at 49. While I can't remember where my car keys are, I remember every moment of that night like it just happened. My sister Tracey calling at midnight to say he was in Mauston in congestive heart failure. I was four months pregnant, shaking and praying as I held his picture and waited for Fred to get home from late bowling. Driving to Mauston as fast as we could, arriving at 3 AM to learn he'd just been flown by helicopter to La Crosse. Getting to the hospital there at 5:30 to find out he had died at 4:42. Going in to see him and touching his curly hair, saying "I love you, Daddy..."

My dad was so many things to us. He was funny. After my fifth grade science fair when my project was Organs of the Body, he wrote me a note: "I'm proud of you with all my heart and liver." He brought a baby pig into the house and it got loose--to our delight and our mother's dismay. When I was reading Stephen King's "Salem's Lot," he scratched on my window screen in the middle of the night, pretending to be a vampire.
He was a hard worker, usually having more than one job. Sometimes I rode in the gas truck with him after school and filled out delivery sheets for him. He would always sing, and we kids learned all the truck driving songs of Dave Dudley and the albums of Johnny Cash. He knew everybody, had connections everywhere, and would help anyone who needed it--which accounted for the steady line of people out the funeral home door for three hours at his visitation.

He could be stern. I would have preferred a spanking to the dreaded "talking to" from Daddy. To know I'd disappointed him was the worst punishment ever. He didn't tolerate foolishness. Once he had us picking corn by hand in a December snowfall, and I was blubbering over my boyfriend dumping me. After listening to this awhile, he told me to knock it off or he'd give me something to cry about! My sister and her high school boyfriend got stuck in the mud when they were "parking." My dad took the tractor and pulled the car out--I was already away at college and don't remember how he reacted to that one! Yet he didn't get mad over the really big things when he knew we needed his support and understanding. Inside, he was a big softy. The first time I ever saw him cry was over my brother having to be hospitalized again for his spina bifida. He cried at "Old Yeller" and when he took me to college and at our weddings.

My biggest regret is that he didn't get to meet his granddaughters. Erica was born exactly 5 months after he died, followed by Molly, Anne, Katie, Depresha, and Alexis. He adored Tracey's boys, and would have so enjoyed watching them all grow up.

I still have a birthday card that he sent me from the road when I was in college and he was driving semi. I dug it out of a box the other day. He wrote, "Annie, don't get carried away on your birthday. I think of you every day. Love, Daddy." I think of him every day, too. I was lucky to have married someone who is a lot like him. But I still miss him--with all my heart and liver.