The years that matter

It's been eight years since my dad passed away.  I have a confession, I forgot how many years it had been the other day. I got really annoyed with myself because I forgot. It seemed like one of those things I would always know right of the top of my head. It was a major, life altering event in my world and I forgot the year. The truth is some days those eight years feel like a full life time ago and other days it feels like yesterday. So as I was sitting in my car, really annoyed with myself for not knowing exactly how long it had been since the man who was my world for such a long time had been gone, then I had a revelation. In that moment I began to remember so many amazing things about my dad. 

Here I was sitting in my car, beating myself up for not know how long he had been gone and suddenly I started to giggle as a flash of a silly face he used to make when he read to my kids popped in my head. As I'm giggling about that, more flashes of him began running through my head. I thought about my childhood and his orange pick up truck that we would hang our hands out of the window and beat on the side chanting "our team is red hot *beat beat beat* your team is ice cold *beat beat beat*" (honestly, I don't even know why we did that but I loved it). I thought about him asking me to make him a tea and me walking up, lifting his arms to the sides and saying "There, you're a t". He tried so hard not to laugh but we have the same sense of humor so he seldom kept it together. So many other memories ran through my head...bonfires that the whole neighborhood could see, the one season I went hunting, him brushing my hair, Santa visits (so many Santa visits). Not all the memories were wonderful, cheerful moments. I remembered having to tell him when I really screwed up some things and getting the two hour lecture about how major it was and that we needed a real plan to fix this. Then he sat with me and we made a plan. I remembered arguments, lectures and feeling like we would never see eye to eye on anything. Those memories are just as valuable as the cheerful, silly ones because he was my dad and it was his job to guide me. (For the record, I didn't always go where he was guiding me.) 

As all these memories are flooding my mind and I'm laughing, crying and working through being annoyed with some things, I had that revelation I mentioned. The years he's been gone are not the years that matter. The years that matter are the years that he was here. The years that he worked for, taught, argued, annoyed, cared for and loved those around him. My dad loved big. He was a big guy, with a big heart and a solid sense of what was right and wrong. His life left an impression on the world and the people around him. So, while today marks eight years of him being physically gone, he's still here. No, things will never be the same and please don't think for one minute that my revelation means I don't miss him. I definitely miss my dad, some times I miss him so much that it takes my breath away, but the reality is remembering the years he was here is always going to be more important then how many years he's been gone.