This past Monday, a lot of people were celebrating Labor Day.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
For my brother and I, we raised a glass to our father, who passed away five years ago.\u00a0 Dad was the kind of guy who lived very much in the here and now.\u00a0 He had a decent job, a brilliant mind and a hell of a disposition.<\/p>\n
He left me a lot of things.\u00a0 I’m sure my nerdy sense of humor (and nerd-dom in general) came from him.\u00a0 My sense of fantasy, even though he never really followed it, certainly was acquired from my father.\u00a0 And of course I also have the beat up old house that he left to me after he passed.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest dissapointments in my life is knowing that he won’t be physically present to see all of the things that my brother and I have accomplished in his name.\u00a0 There are things that we would have liked to have left him, too.\u00a0 A lasting legacy that he could have seen before he died.\u00a0 He wasn’t able to see Matt graduate from college or get his nursing license.\u00a0 Before he passed, I dabbled here and there in a few various things.\u00a0 He was always very excited to see me on a television show or a movie, even if it was only a small glimpse of me as a background actor (read: extra).\u00a0 But he won’t be able to see my proudest accomplishments.\u00a0 He won’t be able to see that I was able to publish a book, even if it was non-traditional.\u00a0 He won’t see all the work I’ve put into making a legacy of my own.<\/p>\n
There are other things that leave a shadowy spot on my heart as well.\u00a0 I know that he’ll never see either of his sons married.\u00a0 He’ll never get to meet Rhianna, the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with.\u00a0 He’ll never experience the joy of being a grandfather.<\/p>\n
These things all weigh heavily on me, as I’m sure they do to Matt, and all the rest of the loved ones he left behind.<\/p>\n
There is a bright spot in all of the sorrow and mourning that you have for someone who has moved on, however.\u00a0 My faith sustains me.\u00a0 I’m sure that there is something out there.\u00a0 At various points since my father has passed away, there is no doubt in my mind that though his physical manifestation is gone, he is still present somehow.\u00a0 He looks down on us and he smiles, content that we’re making the most of our lives, and that we still remember.<\/p>\n
In a year or two, I’ll have muscled my way through the first trilogy of the Tellest fantasy.\u00a0 After that, I want to try and tackle a prequel, that follows Kaos before some of the hardest turmoil in his life.\u00a0 Though I could never properly capture the essence of my father, I’ve already got a character in mind who reminds me so much of him.\u00a0 I wish that Dad was still alive to see him the way I see him – as this hero who gave his children the love he could, and sacrificed for them when necessary.\u00a0 Though he may not see it, I know he feels what is in my heart.<\/p>\n
I remember you, Dad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past Monday, a lot of people were celebrating Labor Day.\u00a0 For my brother and I, we raised a glass to our father, who passed away five years ago.\u00a0 Dad was the kind of guy who lived very much in the here and now.\u00a0 He had a decent job, a brilliant mind and a hell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1UVey-3l","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tellest.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}