I Miss You Dad...

February 11th, 1991 is a special day for me. Besides being my birthday I also share it with my father, a Jr., making me the Third. I've never met anyone who shares the same name and the same birthday as their father so I most definitely feel unique and downright special in that regard. See the thing is, usually with special things at least part of them are in fact bittersweet. Such is life right? I have no memories of my father, a larger than life man I only know through a handful of pictures and second-hand stories. A real superhero to me...a man who could do no wrong. Three months to the day I came into this world, he left it on May 11th, 1991. I recently learned that he was never supposed to make it past December of 1990 but he held on strong to meet his child...a child he had no idea of the gender at the time but loved all the same. I was a surprise, a son with his name, born on his birthday. I can only hope that something so unique and special as this dulled the pain he must have been in on his hospital bed, even just for a minute.

My Dad was diagnosed with colon cancer late in the game. So severe that doctors had originally given him three to four months upon that first diagnosis. He was only 32 years old, married for not even a year a half with a newly pregnant wife. Sometimes when I'm feeling down I like to think of what must have been going through his head at such a young age finding out you have only months left on this earth. He was so strong and instead took that prognosis and kept on living. I even found a letter from his job (he was a police offer) from the Chief of Police writing to my mom after my Dad's passing how moved he was that my Dad two week's before he passed had requested to come back to work! Here was a guy who still wanted to keep fighting and living and even working to make a difference. To this day I've never met a human being with such conviction and strength as that.

I am soon to be 30 years old and as I now approach the third decade of my life I can't help but think more and more about my father. My wife is pregnant now with twins, a son and a daughter and I think of them every second of every day with love that is truly immeasurable. My dad loved me like that and he knew he had such limited time left with me. What that must have felt like. In 4 years I will be older than my own father. What a year that will be for me. I only hope as each day and year pass I make the best decisions for myself and my family and learn from my many mistakes I will surely make along the way. I miss you Dad and I hope you are proud of the man I have become.