i still miss my dad

here is one of my rare blogs for this site. i think i save this place for when i just need to put things down and not worry that anyone is reading it. it is for myself and those few who run across it.
tonight, i think i might talk of my father in this blog of the family that i have. maybe that is due to i just read the blog that i wrote of my mother? i only know that i have a blog inside me that i do not want to put on my more public blog.
my father was born in 1903. he was 53 years old when i came into this world. he had been married before my mother, and had another family. there was 4 girls and one boy. when i was a child, i thought it was normal. the two family thing. those children were already grown, and i had nieces and nephews that were my age and older even. i knew my mom was not their mom, but i never wondered who was there mom.
there was 6 of us. ramona, david, me, daryl, terry and robbie. the first 5 were marion, lenora, roberta, genny and steve (alexander).
i remember my dad as old. he was tall, and strong, and gray headed. at least what hair he had. what he told us was that he had been gray since the age of 20. i couldn't tell you. i didn't know him when he was 20.
he spent his time off work at the bar on the corner. i remember running down the block and telling him that supper was ready and he should come home. on Sundays, the family was able to go there with him, because they had family cookouts. the men would play pool, and the kids the jukebox. sodas were served in glass bottles with a glass of ice.
daddy had a dog. i do not remember the dogs name. it was a small dog, like a terrier of some sort. it was just after Easter. it might have even been Easter Sunday. we had just gotten the dog back from the vet. had it bitten someone and was put up until the fear of rabies had passed? i think that was may be what it was, but again, i do not remember. i was a small child, maybe 5 years of age. the dog was on a leash, and one of my siblings was taking it to the bar.
we lived less than a block from the bar. it was nothing for us to run back and forth between the apartment where we lived and the bar. it was warm and sunny. daddy was standing at the door of the bar, and the dog saw him. the dog became excited and broke loose from whoever was walking with her. she was so excited that she kept running back and forth across the street between us kids and daddy. no one could catch hold of her she was so quick.
then the car came. and the dog was hit. it tore daddy up so much.
i remember the man who owned the store on the corner brought out Easter baskets for us kids to eat on. his way of letting us know how sorry he was we had lost our pet. we sat on the steps of the apartment eating candy while daddy took the dog away. i do not know where he took it too. i remember he cried.
when i was a child, i did not understand that my father was an alcoholic. i thought that men were supposed to sit in bars after work and on the weekends. occasionally mom would go and sit with him too. my older sister would keep an eye on us, or we would go and see what mom and dad were doing. there was three bars within two blocks that they went to, so it was never too far for us to go on our own.
when we moved from that neighborhood, dad stayed home more often. color television happened, and i remember watching bonanza with him. on Sundays his friends would come over for games of poker. we kids would love to hang around and listen to the men as they hassled each other over the cards. there was always huge bottles of whiskey in the pantry for when his friends came over.
when my older brother came home drunk one night, daddy did not say anything to him. but the next morning, when dave got up for breakfast, daddy served him a can of beer on a plate. it was definitely a long time before dave drank again.
mom and daddy always fought. verbally, not physically. i used to say they married each other so that they would have someone to fight with. there was one time that daddy rose his fist to mom. david came between them and he told daddy if he ever struck mom, that he would kill him.
this is such a sparse story. nothing to really let you know what type of a man my father was.
he was a fun person. he loved attention, being the center i think. he was a pool shark, but i didn't know that at the time. he rarely spent money when he was in the bar, because he played his pool games for a beer. if he won, they bought him a beer.
he worked in the same place as far back as i can remember. he said it was an awning company. they hung awnings on the buildings all over chicago, and banners. they decorated the light posts at Christmas. when navy pier was built, at least the big hotels and buildings there, he did alot of the decorating there of canvas awnings and things up on the rafters. he must not have been afraid of heights.
he was injured while he was working. a broken back. he was about 68 or 69 years old. he could never return to work. he came home and told us that his boss told him, "robert, i wish i could take your head and put it on someone elses body". i think that he is the one i get my work ethics from.
he took us to adventure land. it was an amusement park in chicago before things like disneyland and six flaggs. we would go fishing on the weekends, with lots of his friends. or we would have cook outs in the back yard with the whole neighborhood attending, or so it seemed.
we were one of the first in the neigborhood to have a black and white tv, and then again the color tv from sears.
one weekend, he brought home new bicycles for all of the kids, all 6 of us. later i found he had another job helping to move people. he brought me my first electric sewing machine and showed me how to use it. someone he had moved had given it to him. i felt so special because he brought it home for me. he was going to teach me to sew so that when i was old enough to work, i could get a job at his work place and make the awnings and banners.
after he broke his back and was forced into retirement, he moved us from chicago to a small town near where he had grown up. at the age of 14 i met his mother. she was in a nursing home, in a wheel chair. she was in her 90's. and i had also met my only uncle. he died soon after of lung cancer. at the age of 15, i moved with the rest of the family. we met aunts and uncles that we never knew about. aunt dude in decatur. aunt veva in taylorville. the twins aunt lela and lola. dad was the baby of the family, so his being 69 meant that the rest of the family was older. aunt lela died of cancer. uncle steve did too. aunt lola lived in michigan.
daddy was born somewhere on a farm, outside of owaneco illinois. one of two boys out of a family of 12. how he ended up in chicago, i will never know. he met my mother in decatur illinois. they had three children together before they married. i was number 4. the first one supposedly died at birth, but that is another story.
when i became pregnant just after graduating high school, my father didn't ridicule me for being wrong, but he had to stand behind my mother when she did. even so, he still let me know he loved me, and when my first child was born, she was the reason he lived.
he had had more than one heart attack. pneumonia had almost claimed his life. he broke a hip slipping off the bedside, then after that healed, he broke the other hip the same way. with the broken hips came dementia. i was pregnant when he broke the second hip. thankfully the dementia ended before my baby was born.
each time my father became ill, and close to death, i would pray to God to let him stay here with me. that i needed him still and could not do without him.
my father was here for my high school graduation. the birth of my first two children. my marriage. when i was pregnant with my third child, my father became ill again. i could see my selfishness in begging the lord to let me keep my father here with me. i spoke to God one day, and told Him, if He needed my father more than i did, that it was ok to take him to live with Him now.
on a Sunday morning, i was preparing to go to my in laws home. i kept feeling the pull to go see my father. i could not give in to that, because my husband and i had a fight just that week of all the time i had been spending at my fathers, when i had a home of my own to tend to. when we were at the gas station, i heard an ambulance. deep down, i knew that was for my father, but i still said nothing. we went to my in laws, and almost as soon as we walked in the door, the phone rang. my baby sister was on the phone. the only words i heard were "daddy's dead". i told terry don't lie to me, and she said, "i am not lying, daddy is dead" and i collapsed.
at the age of 73, my father had a massive heart attack and passed on. i was 22.
there was no visitation. there was no funeral. i never saw my father dead, and it took 17 years and my mothers death to be able to let loose of him.
i know my father is with me in spirit. i feel his presence quite often. he leaves cigar tips on the ground to let me know he has been there. before mothers death, my father sat on my sofa. i think he was letting me know he was coming for her. he tosses canadian pennies from heaven. and dimes. i was very pregnant with my third child when my dad passed. that has been 33 years ago. i still miss him.