My dad passed away back in 2014. It wasn’t a terrible loss, though we miss him, his memory lives on with us. His funeral service was wonderful. It made me think of the one Edward Bloom had in Big Fish.
He was a really good man. I don’t know about his parental abilities. He barely ever got involved in my rising, but I remember all of his lessons, most of which have been great, I remember his sense of humor, his vast vocabulary, and how much he knew. Everybody loved him in our community.
People who attended his funeral included friends from his childhood (ones he had not seen for decades), his youngest sister we had no idea he had fluent contact with, and a couple of ex-girlfriends who cried his departure alongside my mom. Yes, this is sitting one next to the other. I got to hear so many crazy stories of his childhood that day. His friends would look for me to share their childhood experiences. But what really impressed me was what we found in his locked vault. One he guarded as his dearest treasure.
A few months ago my mom and I decided to go over it. We opened it and started to find all sorts of keepsakes. Pins, mugs, pictures, pictures and more pictures; ones that I had never seen in my entire life. Many of them were pictures of my childhood, pictures of him with my mom and with my siblings in times I did not even exist yet.
Suddenly, I found a big and stacked envelope. It took me a while to open it because it was pretty well tied. Once I did, we found out they were all letters. I read every single one of them. Some letters had been written by friends of mine in our childhood. I knew my friends loved my dad and he was regarded as some bad-ass hero, but I never thought it would be so much.
Many of the letters were to express my dad gratitude for playing with us (he used to play a lot with us, he’d organise water baloon wars in the neighborhood, he’d buy the baloons, he’d buy presents for all the kids, marbles were on him, so were refreshments.) I had taken all of that for granted. How much my dad loved children in my neighborhood. There were also letters from the children of some friends of mine who never moved out of the neighborhood expressing caring and love for both my parents. Letters from children from different towns where they expressed how much they missed him. I found out my dad would visit children and their parents and invite entire families to have an icecream at the beach or a walk in the park. Some of the kids talked about things they had learned from my dad: tying knots, life lessons, how to be humble and helpful in their community. Many times they had routines such as getting up early to do house chores and clean the neighborhood (I still remember that one), walk to the park, playing with pets and such.
Most of these virtues went unnoticed to me, because I’d take them for granted. But it really touched my heart to read how grateful kids around my dad were to him and how much love and appreciation he received from those kids’ parents. I realised how much of a loving man he was, and how much humor is important in life. He was able to make three generations happy with his existence.
Holding an envelope full of gratitude from children in four different decades was enough to get my eyes flooded. Many of the names in those letters I knew well, many of them were already adults, and many of the names I knew attended the funeral service. And when tey said they were sorry about my dad’s passing away, they really meant it. However, on the day of his funeral, I stretched hands with all such people and I saw smile all such faces, not without tears, but their warm smiles made me realise that was not a bad day. It was the day a great man passed from existence to immortality in the memories of those people he made happy.
Read other answers by Francisco on Quora:
- When you die, what do you want to leave behind?
- What is the weirdest thing you have ever seen?
- What are the most ironic ways people have died throughout history?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2jzf2MC
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