Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Unsung Hero (12/07/06)
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TITLE: My Dad, My Hero | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cheryl Maksymowski
12/14/06 -
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I sat by the fire, staring into the embers, drinking a cup of hot tea. I was wrapped up in my favorite quilt. I think it was partially the quilt that brought me the memories, made me sentimental. It’s one of those older quilts, my grandmother made it. It was one that I always wrapped up in growing up. Tonight, it was bringing me memories of my dad. We just buried him a couple of months ago. Memories that just tugged at my heartstrings. Memories that made me want to run to him just one more time. He was young, only Seventy-three but he had been sick for some time. I knew it was for the better. The life he had was not really a life at all. He had been on oxygen for years. He could hardly go a few minutes without it. I thought back to just a few weeks before he passed away when I drove him to the doctor. I don’t know if I hadn’t realized how bad off he was or if I just didn’t want to realize it but I couldn’t believe it as I watched him struggle to get into his van. “When had he gotten so bad? How did that happen without me seeing it? No wonder my mom had been so exhausted.” I sat there, tears streaming down my face?
Not long ago, I stood at his hospital bed and I kept repeating to myself, ‘No regrets, Cheryl. Don’t have any regrets.’ I told my dad I loved him, but did he hear me? Did he know?
Too often, I have realized, we don’t realize what someone really means to us until they are gone. What a hole in my heart losing my dad has left, a void that can’t be filled by anyone or anything. Yet, I didn’t know it. As he got older and sicker I just saw that he got meaner and meaner. Now, as I look back I see that it wasn’t really him that was getting meaner but it was the sickness in him. He was still the man I always knew and loved. The one that I always knew I could go to with anything. The man that after my divorce would lovingly slip me money when I needed it. The man that got so angry at my ex-husband that I thought he would explode. Looking back on that, he just couldn’t stand to see me hurting the way I was.
Memories, they just kept flooding my soul. My dad was the kind of man that anybody could turn to. He was full of life. I knew he had a lot of friends but I never really realized how many until he died. Not only was he a great dad but he was a great granddad as well. Looking at the photos I remembered the days that he would get down on his hands and knees and play with my kids. He would give piggy back rides right and left. He took the kids for rides on his tractor like they were going on a big adventure. He spent a lot of quality time with them, all of them.
Paige, my youngest, at five years of age thought her grandpa was the best! He couldn’t do much with her, certainly not like he could with the other older grandkids. But he gave to Paige whatever he could. She would get off the bus there, after her one half day of kindergarten, and he was always there to greet her and talk about her day with her. Those are moments she would never forget and neither will I.
Still, even though the memories of my dad are good, I have to wonder to myself, “Did my dad know how much I loved him? Did he know that he was my hero?” I hope so. I guess we’d have to call him my silent hero. I never told my dad he was my hero yet, I’m sure he knew. I never praised him like I should have; I never told him like I should have but deep in my heart I know that he knew it.
So, thank you dad for all the years that it went left unsaid, for all the moments that you were there for me without me asking. You truly have been the hero to your little girl’s life.
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