happy birthday country scribe

today is my dad’s birthday, he would have been 72.  he died three years ago on february 1st 2006.  the world hasn’t become any safer without him, and i haven’t been able to relax quite as much without him here.

i know the things he would tell me when life gets really, really hard but it isn’t the same as hearing it with his soothing voice.  i could always count on him to rub my neck just where it needed to be rubbed, to give me smooches with his prickly beard, hold my hand to tell me something taking like 25 minutes to spit it all out.

he never said anything without thinking first.  he was gentle, calm and very thoughtful.  i think he got most out of caring for other people, and comforting them.  he was really good at it.  he had a way of making everyone feel special and he looked in your eyes when you spoke (unless the redskins or the panthers were playing on the television, then it was just better to sit with him and be quiet).

i remember shortly after i moved up to connecticut with the husband-to-be, i literally SCOURED the area for baby ruth candy bars to send to him for father’s day and luckily i found them.

shortly after we moved to amherst, massachusetts, i got a call from a family member saying that dad was in the hospital spitting up blood.  i felt so helpless and wanted to immediately move back home.   we did move back shortly after that.

after one of my first abuse encounters, he went looking for the guy and found him on a street corner with a bible in his hand.  he said to the guy, “do you believe what’s in that book?” harrry evans nodded his head and said, “yes sir”.  my dad said, “you better b/c if you ever touch this little girl again you are going to need it”.

he wasn’t a big guy but he had a way of putting fear into you if he needed to.  it wasn’t something he did very often.

my dad was married to another woman before he met my mom.  he has three kids from that marriage.  at one point that wife left him for another man and then came back after she got pregnant.  my dad raised and loved that child as his own, no questions asked.  the boy drowned in a lake in florida after getting caught on a branch under water and this haunted my dad for the remainder of his life.

when he met my mom, she had three girls.  he fell in love with her and brought us in as if we were his own.  he had enough love in his heart to go around.  he made some mistakes, i didn’t realize until his death that moving to north carolina meant leaving behind his three kids.  that haunted him too.

back in those days, the mothers were the keepers of the children in the event of divorce.  he wasn’t sure how to handle the situation and he did the best that he could, making mistakes just like the rest of us.  maybe that’s why he was extra special, some type of living amends for not knowing the right thing to do at the time and realizing it later.

he was a scribe, a poet, a songwriter.  i used to wonder how he wrote with such depth and emotion, only to realize after his death that he carried around a lot of regret just like the rest of us.  he would never intentionally hurt anyone but as life happens we inevitably cause others pain. 

he was madly in love with my mom, they were best friends and did everything together.  he cared for her and tried to protect her from harm and he did a good job of it.  i think he felt guilty for dying first, hoping that she would be as well cared for as he cared for her.

not a day goes by that i don’t think of him, and miss him.  i am grateful that i had him for as long as i did, for all the things he taught me, the love he gave, and the sacrifices he made for others in his life, and that i was able to quit my job so i could have those last three months to spend with him taking him around to all his appointments.

happy birthday country scribe, i hope i get to see you again some day.