~at my father's age~

It will soon be coming up on 31 years this 11th of December that my father passed away and it would be the understatement of my life to say that I cannot believe that those many years have gone by.  When he left us and returned back Home on that early Saturday morning just two weeks shy of Christmas Day, it was a very sad and lonely time for our family.  Dad had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in the early 1980's  and there was precious little that the doctors could do to treat him let alone to save him.  18 months after his original diagnosis of a malignant tumour that x-rays showed to be about the size of a lemon in the lower lobe of his right lung, he was gone.   It's surely been a long time that I saw his kind face, heard his sweet and loving voice, or held his hand in mine.  I miss my father and I love him still this day.  Some how or another, life went on without him.

I think of my dad often, sometimes for the strangest of reasons.  In fact, just earlier this week I was recalling the fact that he had this light  blue sweater and shirt that he always wore.  When I say he "always wore" them, well I mean that.  He ALWAYS wore them.  My mom would have to literally wash them while he was sleeping at night or when he was in the hospital.  They must have felt very comfortable to him and when you are slowly dying and struggling for every breath that you take, well something comfortable to wear must feel pretty darn good.  Dad was buried in that shirt and sweater and a pair of his favorite gray pants.  It's the way he would have wanted it, I'm sure.  

I thought it strange at the time, that someone with an entire closet filled with nice shirts to wear, would choose to wear the same one over and over and over again.  In picture after picture, there was my dad in his nice blue shirt and sweater.....I found it unusual and even kind of weird at times until I thought about his daughter~

 

                        Like father, like daughter~and that's all I have to say about that.  

Dad was only 59 years old when his body finally decided it was time to call it "quits" and although I thought he seemed older at the time, I have now decided that he was actually very young.  A person tends to look at things that way, especially as we ourselves inch closer and closer to the very same age ourselves.  In late October of 2014, I too shall become 59 and in many ways it's so very hard to fathom that I will soon attain the blessing of the same number of years that my father had.  I was only 27 when he died and YOU tell me where 31 years have gone.  

One Saturday afternoon  when my mom was still with us, I went to visit her in the nursing home that she was living in.  I remember towards the end of the conversation that she pulled my hands into her lap and gazed at them with the strangest of looks on her face.  I wondered what she was thinking and after a moment she told me.  "Peggy Ann you have your dad's hands and fingers," she lovingly said.  I thought it was strange to hear her say that but she went on to describe how my father's fingers and even the fingernails of his hands looked just like mine did.  The more I looked at them and listened to her speak of it, the more I realized that she was right.  He'd been gone for more than 25 years at the time, yet the memory of his hands became so very real to me.  In looking at my own two hands, I was really looking at HIS hands and for whatever reason, I draw a lot of comfort in knowing that.   So for giving me his name, his hands and fingers and a thousand other things in this life, I am beholden to the man that God saw fit to be my father.

If he would be alive today, John B. Scott, Jr. would be nearing his 91st birthday.  I'm not sure that he would have loved to have been an old guy and he probably would have put up one heck of a fuss to live anywhere but on the farm that he was from.  Although I miss him dearly, my father's part of the "plan" was fulfilled in the winter of his 59th year.  His time to return back to his Heavenly home arrived quicker than I would have wished but I know without a doubt that I am going to see him again someday when I make it to where I am going.  In everything I give thanks, especially that God chose a young man named John Scott to be my father for all time.  I could not have wished for a kinder and more loving dad than he was.

Take care everyone out there and for goodness sake, if you still have your father and/or your mother, please give them a call.  You don't have to talk about anything in particular.  "Hi and I love you" are great conversation starters.  You won't regret it if you do....you surely will regret it if you don't.  

If I was going to have any one else's hands and fingers, well I guess I'd rather have his.  
My father's hands....just like mine.

                                How I will always picture my father to be~Love you Daddy :)