by Jean C. Fisher

Created on: May 29, 2009

I can tell you the answer to this question. I can tell you the answer because, when I was a child of two, my father died and, when I was nine, my father's mother - the person I loved more than any other person in this world - also died.

My mother didn't believe children should attend funerals; therefore, I attended neither my father's nor my grandmother's.

I grew up with only a tiny scrap of memory of my father who was an Army Non-Com - a veteran of both WWII and the Korean Conflict and a former Merrill's Marauder. When people asked me about my parents and I told them my father was deceased, they would say they were sorry. I would always reply that they needn't feel sorry for me because I didn't really remember my father and never felt a true sense of loss about him.

I lived for 50 years with that opinion...

For some reason which I cannot, even now, explain, I decided to take flowers to my father's grave one Memorial Day. I'd never been to visit his grave in my entire life but, this particular Memorial Day, I was determined to go.

My mother had always told me my father was buried in Golden Gate Cemetery and, so, on the Friday before the Memorial Day of my fiftieth year of life, I called Golden Gate Cemetery to find out the exact location of his grave. To my amazement, I was informed that my father was not buried there and, after checking with the Veteran's Administration, I discovered that my father was actually buried in the Presidio Army Cemetery in San Francisco.

So, early on that Memorial Day morning, I set out on the 60-mile journey from my house to the Presidio. Eventually, I found my way to the top of a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay where the cemetery is located and - armed with the plot number of my father's grave - I searched row by row until I found it on the very end of a row right next to the street.

I parked my car, got out and paused for a moment to take in the view...

I could see Alcatraz Island below me and the Marin Headlands beyond as the fog was just beginning to creep over the Golden Gate Bridge.

"He's probably got the best view in all of San Francisco", I thought to myself.

Standing before his grave - still holding the flowers I brought with me in my hand - I read the words chiseled on the uniform, white, marble stone. There were my father's first, middle and last names, his rank, the state in which he was born and the division of the Army to which he belonged.

That's when it hit me: My father was really dead. That was HIS

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