Anniversary (of sorts)

Looked at the calendar today and after a little research realized that Tuesday was the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. It is official: half of my life has been lived without him. I don’t talk about him much, and I must admit there are probably days that I don’t think about him much, but there is never a time when I deny his influence he had on my life. And some of those influences were in unexpected ways, I suspect at least. There were times, during the last years of his life, when I felt profoundly uncomfortable around him. But I am not the same person I was back then, I have changed and grown, and I suspect that our relationship might have changed and grown, given the chance. That chance was taken from me when he died, and that is what I miss the most.