Two Years Passed (November 15th, 2007)

It's funny how days just pass by so quickly and your so involved in what your doing and your thoughts always seem to wander aimlessly in their own direction sometimes. Days fly by, kids grow an inch or two, you find a gray hair or many, you shave your head because you know the inevitable is going to happen, you gain a few you loose a couple and you walk into work with your head held high and then return home with an aching back and legs from getting your ass run to the ground.
I work at one of the local hospitals in town and see people come and go and always even for a short time I wonder about their lives, and I even ask sometimes because there seems to be a resemblance to someone that I once had known. Shooting the bull so to speak trying to lay at ease that they are in the hospital for something that might be minor up to a very serious surgery. We connect for some reason. On that note I will begin: Two years passed.
I find myself looking at patients in somewhat of a different manor. That of my father. Some of the patients that I have encountered over the past two years seems to parallel his health. I seem to glance into their eyes and see my father in their eyes staring back at me. The pain that I'm sure he was going through and knowing that this might be it.
I've kick myself in the ass everyday that he is gone. And wished he was still here. The love for that man that raised me up to the sun. My mind always seems to wind up here. I have not in the past year and a half visited his marker/grave. I promised that I would spread his ashes in my favorite spot and help my step mother with the rest of his ashes. I keep putting it off and I do not know why. Something deep inside of me just pulls me away from those commitments. I'm sure that there is something in my psyco self. I have not really grieved until now and really I think has been to long. I'm rambling err typing.
Two years have passed almost to the day that I walked into the ER, and stared at my father as he laid on the gurney lifeless, two years since I laid my hand on his forehead, two years since my last words to him were "Take care I love you", two years since he called and wanted me to come to the hospital and chat with him and help him walk around the nurses station, two years of my life that have passed by so damned fast that I cannot fathom, two years that we made plans for his funeral, two years that my kids gave a hug and a handshake to their grandfather, two years that I have grown up to be my father. I loved him even in the darkest of days between us.
This day I will grieve and remember him not as a patient but as a man, my father, my hero, my mentor, my friend, hunting partner, fishing buddy, and a friend that i will never come across again.
I love you, you are missed by many, your new daughter-in-law misses you and her father (hopefully you will meet him) and I promise that with in a year there will be a picture or video of the ashes that are scattered. Then you will be free to roam and sore with the black birds that pissed you off so much.
You are missed ........

Leland F. Sharpe