This will be the first time for me to write anything about him.

It has been nearly five years since my Dad passed away, unknown to me until after he was dead and buried.

Thanks to my mother.

I can't find it in my heart to forgive her for not telling me of his death. I have no words in my heart for her, and when I drop off my wife and children at her house for a visit, my eyes will not even look her way.

It is always so easy to curse that woman.

My Dad produced six boys with her. He always said, "I had six boys so I would have six pallbearers at my funeral when I die."

I cannot say us boys "looked forward" to becoming our Dad's pallbearers, but we pretty much already new our duties and what would be expected of us at the time of his death.

I was in the Army stationed in South Korea when I received the email message from one of my older brothers with my Dad's obituary as an attachment. This particular brother lived within 40 miles of my Dad, and was the first of us boys to learn Dad had died, when he was reading the morning newspaper and happened to be skimming over the obituaries.

After I first joined the Army, I was stationed in West Germany and wasn't there but a few months when I had to return Stateside for my Dad's first heart attack. My unit first sergeant broke the news there was a Red Cross message stating he was in the hospital.

So, little did I ever expect to receive an email 24 years later with an attached obituary explaining to me that Dad was already six feet under.

Within my heartbreak, I recall my Dad's absolute significance in my life.

Dad drove each day from our six-acre country home in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, all the way to Pittsburgh where he operated an overhead crane above a furnace in a steel mill for 30 years.

His work was always "shift work." My favorite shifts were his 10 to 6 or 12 to 8, when he would work through the night. These were my favorites because I got to see him before I went to sleep, and when I woke the next day, he was arriving home. This way, I never missed my Dad, and it seemed he was always there.

When it was time for Dad to arrive home, a couple brothers and I would sometimes go wait for him at the top of our country road. It was a long way off, and we'd ride home in the back of his blue pickup truck. I never saw any of the neighbor kids going to the top of the road to meet their Dads. Maybe it was because their Dads didn't drive pickup trucks.

Dad was self-made. Yes, he

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Memoirs: Death of a friend?
We want to hear your view. Write now!