by David S. Kadaris

Created on: May 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

This year, only a little more than a month before Father's Day, a little more than a month past his sixty-sixth birthday, my father passed away. A few of you know how hard it is to say just that much. These few people are the testament to the importance of Father's Day. The rest of you yet stand to become the same testament.

Let me start by saying that I have always loved and appreciated my father. In elementary school I remember being asked to write an essay about my hero, who he was and why he's somebody I look up to. Maybe it's cliche to write about your dad in these things but as my class-mates were scribbling notes about Michael Jordan and Neil Armstrong (or perhaps or was Michelangelo the ninja turtle and Stretch Armstrong, we were young then) I was hunched over my paper thinking, "can't I come up with someone better than my dad?"

I thought of people I could put down and time and again my dad was the best I could come up with. Not because I'd failed to see Superman lift cars or missed Michael Jordan sailing through the air for yet another in-your-face slam-dunk, but because I honestly looked up to him (and still do, if you're curious) more than I ever have any other man. What I had never seen anybody else do was exactly what I'd seen him do.

While there were opposing teams and forces of good and evil to combat, I'd seen my dad weather them all and more. I'd seen him weather real adversity.

We were lower class and I knew it even then (from the moment I didn't get my Power Wheels because it was too expensive) but I never thought about it. I wanted for nothing. When my mother wasn't there (which, although I love her too, I must admit was fairly often) he was. In fact, by and large I think it's fair to say that he raised me single handedly (in more ways than one - one adversity he overcame in his life was being born with polio in his right arm, causing it to never develop into a functional limb).

But this isn't about my father. This is about Father's Day. I'm twenty-three now. I've seen twenty-two Father's Days go by with nothing more than a new book or an electric razor to offer my dad. I understand the growing alienation of the youth (for all these years I have been that alienation) but this goes beyond that. People come and go from our lives more than we notice. Sometimes even the people who matter the most go. Father's Day is for giving appreciation to one example of such people.

There will always be another Father's Day, maybe you don't really have to tell

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