I am blessed to be surrounded by a lot of positive people. My husband, my sister, my kids, several good friends, even the majority of my Facebook peeps are rays of sunshine. So it's taken me a long time to figure out how such a darkness could have fallen over me in the midst of such light. My dad was one of the most positive people I know, and when I lost the daily dose of, "Your hair looks great," or "I love your new boots," it was enough to cast me into a depression that thankfully medication has lifted. In the month or so before the medicine, the really dark days, I told Brad I was sad because I couldn't "feel" my dad. I wasn't finding pennies all the time, I wasn't having moments of divine intervention as I had been. It felt as if he left me, and I wasn't ready for that. Before, it seemed like I was dealing with things pretty well. So much so that I even fooled myself. Since the depression has lifted, I still hadn't really f
Most everyone who knew my dad had a story about him. The past few weeks, I've heard a ton of them. In his passing, in his memory, I would like to share a few of my own. He fed the birds and shot the cats and squirrels—with a pellet gun, just to scare them—except mama squirrel. She ate peanut butter sandwiches out of his hand. He loved pretty girls—look at my mom--and never missed an opportunity to steal a kiss from one. He loved fabulosity and used to say, “If you like it, buy it; don’t look at the price tag.” Good thing my mom tempered his extravagance with some common sense and frugality, but not before I lived that belief right into Chapter 13. He had stories galore from standing next to Woody Hayes on the sidelines at a Buckeyes game, to teaching Jackie O to ride a horse. He applied makeup to some Hollywood movie stars, and once he told me that lip balm icon Bonnie Belle’s father had offered him a boat to marry her. Some of these stories we shrugged off as his