Twenty Years

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. I have thought of him many times today, actually the past few days.......twenty years seems like so long ago, seems like only yesterday.

He was one of the smartest people I knew, and he only had an eight grade education. He went to work in the coal mines when he was a child for twenty-five cents a day. He fell in love with my mother and welcomed she and her four children into his life.......then they had my sister, nine years later me, and then my younger brother, twenty months later.

He joined the air force when WWII broke out, he was a medic. His friends told me war changed him,just like it did all of them. He would never speak to me about the war, he buried it somewhere deep in the bottom of his heart.

He taught me to live by the Golden Rule. He taught me to work out my own salvation. He loved being outdoors, growing flowers and vegetables. He believed that there was purpose for everything on this earth, good or bad. He taught me compassion. He gave me a love for music.

He taught me to eat oysters on the half shell and to shoot pool. I have his blue eyes.

He played the guitar and sang the blues. He could live on peanut butter, so could I.

He made the world around him a little better, I am a better person because of him.

I miss him. His name was Jim......his friends called him Sharky.