My Dad!

My Dad is 86 years old. He is hard of hearing and shuffles much more than he used to. He tells the same stories and makes the same jokes over and over. There is a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. He really doesn't seem old to me. Yes, I can see his aging exterior, but when I look at him there are layers of the man he has been over the years. He seems to be thirty, fifty, seventy and eighty six all at the same time. I see a person, not an old man. Though he stumbles over his ideas and thoughts somewhere in the jumble of words there is a wisdom that has been honed and ripened over the years. His love is steady and secure.

I called my Dad yesterday for Father's Day and asked him how his day was going. He said he wasn't feeling very good, that he was a little tired. I asked him why and he said he was fasting but he couldn't remember why. My mother immediately reminded him that they were fasting for my sister who was to have surgery the next day. "Oh, that's right," he said, "We are fasting for Sandra."

My 86 year old father was spending Father's Day fasting for one of his children. When I hung up the phone I was flooded with the sense of the unpretentious sacrifices my parents have given to me for 55 years. I thought what my Dad was doing was truly great in the fullest sense of that word. And yet I am sure he was completely unaware that his actions were more than just another part of the daily routine. It's just what you do.

My sister's surgery went well. How could it not with the sacrifice of an 86 year old father and a 92 year old mother fasting for their child.