We Miss You Roy . . .

This anniversary of the death of my ol' dad seems to have arrived and passed in a strange, dreamlike state. As the time passes it seems more and more unreal that he is gone.

My dad and I were partners in the crime of being misfits. The great bond that we shared is that we never really fit in anywhere, and so we spent a lifetime commiserating over out mutual outsider status.

I have fallen a very long way since Roy left us. But I struggle along.  I cannot open a book, draw a single line, or write a word without an internal nod to all that he taught me and all that we shared. He was the most thoroughly human man I have ever known. Almost entirely self-educated, he weaved through his intellectual weaknesses with a genuine joy for learning and a real pleasure of reading and writing. The heights of his joys were great, and the depths of his lows were genuine anguish. But through it he just loved being alive. The sound of the breeze on a summer day, the color of the sky on an autumn evening; these brought him inestimable pleasure through even his darkest moments. And for that I admire him.

I miss you Roy, every single day.