I Love you Dad

There is so much I want to say about my dad; I want to say he was the best dad in the world despite being a flawed person. I want to say he knew the answer to so many problems despite him seeing practical solutions that people would overlook and telling me “just pray to God and everything will be fine.” Most of all, I really do want him here now.
On Sunday June third at 15:33 my father was called into God’s kingdom. What had started as a simple colonoscopy and lead to the removal of a tumor with six months of chemotherapy ended with a two month hospitalization and the loss of my most favorite person in the world. This whole experience is still a shock to friends and family who were close to my dad, but instead of focusing on the sadder parts of the experience, I wanted to focus on something important to me that my watchers probably gathered that is closely tied to my relationship with my dad, God and the Catholic religion he left for me.
When I was little one of my first memories was my dad telling me one day I, and everyone I know and love, will die. Death was okay though, because so long as you were a good and kind person, you went to heaven. From there he taught me about God and Jesus and with his humble ways he taught me Catholicism.
He wasn’t like other men in the sense that “emotions and intelligence are dumb,” and while he did teach me skills he felt a man needed to know, my dad did things most men wouldn’t do with their sons. When I was seven and didn’t want to learn to shoot a bb gun, he asked me why. I stated that from what I saw on tv guns were used to end life, my dad accepted this reasoning for not wanting to learn to use a gun and never brought up the topic again. The main thing my dad did, that most fathers don’t do with their sons was that he was very open about loving me and my brothers.
Everyday when I was dropped off to school he told me he loved me, every night before I went to bed he told me he loved me. Every phone call I had with him ended with both of us exchanging “I love you.”
As I got older things started to get complicated; I had been assigned two Sunday school teachers that were homophobic in eighth and ninth grade that stated no matter what I tried I would go to hell for my existence (don’t worry, they have been asked to resign from ever teaching sunday school again). However because of that and many trials in life (well highschool) I felt the need to join a statistical correlation concerning gay youth.
My dad noticed something was wrong though, I call it having the best love a parent could ever have. When I was seventeen planning to become a statistic I decided to tell my dad I was gay just to give a reason for said statistic to happen. I expected to be thrown out, condemned, beaten, but I wasn’t. He smiled, hugged me tight, and said he loved me anyways.
From that point on I decided I would stay in this religion to honor my dad for his unconditional love.
While my dad did have flaws (he didn’t realize that me being gay also meant I would date and have a boyfriend at some point), he was still someone I loved (and still do) greatly. It’s hard to think properly right now, it’s hard to type the sixty four pages my dad deserves and more about how awesome a parent and person he was. It’s hard to breath for various reasons and type on this keyboard (mostly because of allergy season,) but for now I continue to be with my family and pray for him. I’ll try my best to continue his legacy. I am taking a break from blogging as well, to recover and regain the ability to read books and listen to audiobooks.
Be kind.

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