# My Dad



## T.S.Bowman (Jun 15, 2014)

It's Father's Day in my little corner of the world so I thought I would honor my dad in the best way I know how. He's no longer with us (hasn't been for a little over two years now) but here's hoping that God has seen fit to equip Heaven with WIFI. 

I know I'm not one of the better writers here, but I think he'd be proud of me anyway.

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     When I was little, my Dad seemed like the biggest man in the world. He had a big, booming voice that demanded to be heard. He was the hand that gave me quite a few instances of Red Bottom Syndrome and Lord knows I deserved every one of them.

     Unfortunately, he and my mom couldn't manage to get along very well, so they, like many others, got divorced. I didn't see him for around 20 years after that. I was very angry with him because it left me to learn everything on my own. I had no one to teach me to catch a baseball. No one to teach me to shave. No one to teach me much of anything of what it meant to be a man. 

     Fast forward and I go over to my little brother's house, and who is he talking to on the phone (also for the first time in 20 years) but my Dad. My brother convinced me to take the phone and when I did, I said something to my Dad that I later regretted, but was right at the time. I had to let him know how I felt...how bad he had hurt me.

     He spent the next 10 years or so trying to make up for leaving. 

     My Dad was a Vietnam veteran. He was in the Navy during that time and he served as one of the Sea Bees. They aren't quite as elite a unit as the SEALs...but the fact that my Dad helped paved the way, literally in some cases, for the other armed forces to make their way through the country, crossing bridges that my Dad helped build so that they wouldn't have to SWIM across rivers, is something that I am very proud of.

     He was helping me move one day, and we decided to take a break. So we sat on the tailgate of his truck and just talked for a bit. I asked him what the worst thing he had happen over there was and he told me that it was a time when he was in a caravan in hostile territory. He was driving an ill running tractor and the entire caravan wound up leaving him behind. So here he is, for the next two hours, driving this tractor that wouldn't do any more than 10 miles an hour, even less on hills, through hostile territory. My writing probably doesn't do justice to the fright he felt that day. His words brought goosebumps because I could actually picture it.

     During that same conversation, we were discussing Global Warming (don't ask me how that came about because I have no idea) and he told me that "Everything was fine right up until NASA started sending up those damn rockets!" All I could do was sit there for a minute, contemplating what I had just heard. After a moments reflection, I looked at him and said "How in the blue hell did I even get related to you?" His answer, and the best way to describe our entire relationship..."I'm really not sure. I think you are the milkman's kid." Then he grinned that grin of his/mine and just about fell off the truck because he couldn't stop laughing. He was dead serious about the rockets. though. Make no mistake about that. 

     A little over two years ago, I got a call from him. He told me that he had a spot on his bladder and that he was going to have a biopsy done. A week later he called me again to tell me that it was cancerous, but they had removed it and they thought they had gotten it all.  Six months later, after the cancer, a vicious mutant called small cell carcinoma, had ravaged him lungs, and finally his brain, he died in his sleep in his home. I had talked ti him on the phone the day before and he sounded tired, but he was pretty much his normal self. Joking with me about something or other. He asked that I call him back later on because he was going to take a nap. That was the last time I spoke to him because he never woke up from that nap.

     My Dad wasn't a great man. He was a human being that made several mistakes that he always regretted. No one is perfect. But I don't care. He was my Dad. I would kill for another few hours to just sit and talk to him the way we did on that truck tailgate. The one consolation I get is that he got to meet his Grandson and my girlfriend before he died.

If Heaven has Wifi, I hope my Dad sees this post and I hope he's proud of what I have become.

I love you and miss you Dad.
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If you have read this far, I hope I have done justice to him and what he meant to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.


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## garza (Jun 15, 2014)

Beautiful, T.S. Not exactly the usual Father's Day message, but beautiful nonetheless. It's the reconciliation after so long a time of alienation that makes it so. 

And don't believe the CBs are any less elite than the SEALs. I've seen them in action. They can fight and build at the same time, but somehow building bridges and airfields while being shot at does not catch the attention it should.


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## PiP (Jun 15, 2014)

So true, Bowie ... This brought a tear to my eye.

Lets all raise our glasses and remember our fathers on Father's Day.


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## InstituteMan (Jun 15, 2014)

I really like your honesty here, TS. I suspect that he would prefer to be remembered faults and all, because whoever you would be remembering without the faults wouldn't be him. This was a good piece for me to read this morning.


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## T.S.Bowman (Jun 15, 2014)

garza said:


> Beautiful, T.S. Not exactly the usual Father's Day message, but beautiful nonetheless. It's the reconciliation after so long a time of alienation that makes it so.



Well..if nothing else, I'm not usually "typical" anyway. LOL



> And don't believe the CBs are any less elite than the SEALs. I've seen them in action. They can fight and build at the same time, but somehow building bridges and airfields while being shot at does not catch the attention it should.



It's funny. My Dad was always so understated about the CBs. He may have made mistakes, but the one thing I never heard him be guilty of was bragging. 

I only found out about the CBs because my mom happened to have a couple of old books, kinda like yearbooks I guess, that had some pictures and mentioned the group. After I found it, I looked them up.

I did ask him, during the tailgate conversation, why he never mentioned it and he said it was because it wasn't anything major. He just saw it as having a job to do.


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## garza (Jun 15, 2014)

Typical Navy. 'Just doing my job, sir.'


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## Gumby (Jun 15, 2014)

I really enjoyed this, and I bet your dad would, too. Honest, down to earth and real. Thank you for sharing your dad with us.


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## Pandora (Jun 16, 2014)

I really enjoyed TS thanks for writing and sharing, it was a wonderful feeling.


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## apple (Jun 16, 2014)

I lenjoyed this, too. He would love your story, I'm sure.  I'm sorry you lost him so soon, but so happy you were able to get to know him.  I think we all love our parents , NEED to love our parents, no matter what.  My dad was a CB in Guam during World War 2, building roads and an air field.  He never said much about it, but I understand it was very dangerous and there was much taking matters into their own hands.  

Very nice, T.S.


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## Winston (Jun 16, 2014)

garza said:


> ...
> And don't believe the CBs are any less elite than the SEALs. I've seen them in action. They can fight and build at the same time, but somehow building bridges and airfields while being shot at does not catch the attention it should.



I'll second that.  I'm a much better fighter than builder.  I couldn't fathom doing both simultaneously.  
You should be proud.  I'm sure some of that rubbed off on you.

And no men are great.  Only their spirit, and what they leave behind in us can be great.


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## T.S.Bowman (Jun 16, 2014)

Thanks everyone. I like to think that my Dad would be proud of me and what I am trying to do. He once told me that I should never let go of a dream no matter who tried to stand in my way.

I didn't take that advice for a long time. But now...now I am taking his advice because I know he's watching.


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