Tag Archives: parenting

Thoughts of My Father

I often wonder: when I pass from this Earth, “How will I be remembered?”

Three years ago, in the early morning, on a Wednesday, my father passed, and it was very apparent how he was remembered. His funeral was literally standing room only and it lasted more than four hours. Person after person took the podium and extolled his virtues, each with an individual perspective of who my father was to them.

In my childhood, my father was someone who could only be described as “tough.” In our lives there was no room for back-talk or bad manners or even warmth. Music didn’t grace our home. Jokes and humor were dismissed as frivolous. Discipline was constant, and religion and educational studies were paramount.

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Love Abides – Chapter 9.3

It has been a little more than three years since, what was for me—and a few others, that fateful Saturday in November, and I find myself drawing this story to a close. The journey I have walked since that day has been as difficult as it is rewarding and as terrifying as it is wonderful. Continue reading

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Love Abides – Chapter 9.1

How do you say goodbye to a child—to your child? How do you tell your son goodbye for the last time? I am left with only questions and memories. Questions with no answers and memories that are malleable. Things that pose questions of what is real and what is imaginary.

There was so much left to do. And now you have gone. I hope you found your peace. I hope you found the respite you were so desperately seeking.

Rest now sweet child. Rest now. Lay your burden down and rest in the knowing that you are loved and always were.

A Parent’s Lament

How, indeed? This, the first of so many laments I penned, now seems prophetic as I think back on the common rhetorical question I was asked innumerable times:

I can’t imagine. How do you do it?

Quite simply, it is love. Continue reading

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