A Father’s Day Tribute
~ Part Two ~
Father’s day was a very rough day for me. To be honest, I wanted to pretend and stay in bed for the day. To quote my husband, it was a bittersweet day.
It has been six months since my father passed away, and my first father’s day without him in the fifteen years since he came into my life. We had put my father’s ashes to rest, a few weeks before, in his families plot on Saturday May 23rd. My youngest sister Jennifer created a Facebook event called Wayne Cook’s Going Away Party to remind everyone of the date. It was a brutally painful day for me.
We asked my Uncle to do the honors of placing him in the ground. There was a modest turnout at the cemetery, mostly family and a few of his very close friends.
At the park afterwards there were even less people, and many who came did a quick eat and run, leaving before many sat down to eat, so there wasn’t much of an opportunity to get pictures with everyone who had come.
My sister Amy, was the only one brave enough and organized enough to say anything. She’d prepared a sweet informal eulogy of her memories. She did a great job and really explained what a complicated and complex man he was. I didn’t have the same memories of him as I had never known him as a child. It was a beautiful tribute to him, and I know he would have been honored to have her say such wonderful things of her memories.
I created a video montage for the memorial in May, similar to the one that I created at Christmas shortly after he died. It was my way of honoring my memories of him.
My husband and I had a great family dinner that evening with my Aunt and Uncle, my sister Jennifer and her fiancé Daniel, her mother Lori of the “First Wives Club!” and one of my father’s oldest and dearest friends Darla. There were a few faces missing, but they were spending the evening with my dad’s second ex-wife and her family, so it was just a small group of us for dinner. Saying good-bye the second time around was just as hard as it had been at the viewing in December.
This was the first Father’s Day in thirteen years without talking to my Father in law. For my husband, it was even harder, since it’s been a year and a half since his daughter abruptly chose to stop being a part of our lives. Since our world had revolved around her for most of our marriage, her departure left a void in our lives.
Our dearest friends were of great support on this Father’s Day. We had breakfast at Sabatino’s Ristorante with Karol and Steve Johnson, then after running errands, we stopped by the car show being presented by the Trinity United Presbyterian Church, and had lunch with Cari and Fred Warnock, their daughter Sierra, and her parents Barbara and Joe.
Afterwards Cari and Fred stopped by and had a few beers with us to relax before heading home to dinner. We had a quiet dinner of Indian leftovers, and then went for a walk with the dogs down to the Ice Cream Company for a commiserating Sundae.
I am not normally a self-absorbed person, but on Sunday I really was. And to those in our life who also suffered their own losses and heartache yesterday, I’m sorry that I was not as supportive to you as you were to me. So to the darling people in our lives who also kept their chin’s up in light of their losses, and those who have parents or children that are MIA by choice, I am sorry for your pain. It is not un-noticed, and I’m sorry it went un-acknowledged yesterday. You are in my heart always.