I received an email several weeks ago that talked of the dash, the dash between the date of ones birth and the date of ones passing and my mind wandered right away to my father. My father passed away in October of 06 and left us in grief and an overwhelming sense of loss.

The constant in the lives of my brothers and sister, the rock, the foundation of our lives was gone, now that time has passed and my grief has alleviated I can once again look at the life of a man that gave me life. He reached the age of 80, but those last four years of his life had to have been the hardest for him. A man who was always in control of his life, lost that control with the beginnings of a stroke, and for the next four years I saw as we lost him little by little. As his oldest son, my memories of him go back to the time I remember when I was seven, of all the times we spent together, of the vacations we took together, of the Sundays at my home with the animals in the back yard. Now the sadness is not as pervasive, I have come to accept that his passing was good for my father, his pain, and his loss of his dignity bothered him greatly during those last few months.

I could tell that I was losing him and I spent as much time as possible around him, but when I found him sitting on the couch talking about how bad the night had been for him, I had this overwhelming desire to hug him and tell him that all would be well, but I couldn't do that to my father, I respected him and treated him with the dignity that he deserved and took care of him without intruding into his privacy.

In my daily life I see his face and hear his words when something triggers those memories of him and I know now more then ever that I will never see the man I loved with all my heart again, he's gone, now its time to take care of mother with what time she has left.

My father raised us, by example and by guidance, he taught us to live off the land, to raise our crops, to butcher our meat and he gave us a religious foundation that has kept us on an even keel throughout our lives. I was a child of the 60's and as such I broke out and became my own man, I saw changes in this country and went to war and yet as I got older I found that when I came home, there was my father to tell me when I was wrong or when I was right.

As a little boy I always felt my father's love, in the way he talked to me and disciplined me, and the things that he showed me. He taught me common sense and always to look for

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