I Love You Dadai

Diane Estrella is doing a different sort of blog hop. It's about loss and connecting  with others who have experienced loss. If you want to read about it and read about Diane's Mama then pop over to Diane's house

Here's mine:

My  Dadaí (This is the Irish Gaelic word for Daddy.) was a strong, kind, honest gentleman. He went HOME the week before Christmas in 1997, seventeen days after Ivy was born. Kidney cancer took him, but it could never take the memories.

It was always our job to go get the Christmas tree. (My brothers and sister were all ready grown with families of their own by the time I was born.) We lived in South Florida and every year Mamai would send us out. It was ALL about being together We loved it. Just as we loved heading out to the shooting range together. (Uh yeah, I'm a sharpshooter, he made sure of that.) We'd stay at the range for hours. And no matter how many times that gun sent me flying backwards, I'd get right back up and try it again. Eventually I became an expert shooter.

This man taught me the value of honesty. And he taught me the value of a dollar. :)

I miss him so  much. He built my cabinets that are in my kitchen when he was 76 years old. That's what he loved, what he did to make a living. He was a wood worker. And the best I've ever seen. He was also a self taught mathematician. He worked out calculus/trig problems for fun. He had loads of books. That's where my love of books came from.

He was a father. And the best I've ever seen. I leave you with a quote from my Dadai:

"The first hundred years are the hardest." :)