# Have You Told Your Dad?



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

While You Still Can?

Regards, Mike

http://www.progressiveforage.com/forage-production/producer-features/of-farms-and-fathers


----------



## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

I read that article a couple months ago and it literally brought a tear to my eye. Every now and then I will walk up to Dad and hug him and tell him I love him. Not near as much as I should though. He really is a superhero to me.


----------



## notmydaytoday (Sep 16, 2016)

If you have the chance to tell your Dad how much he matters do so. I was luck to tell mine just a couple of months before he was killed in motorcycle accident and has helped me to know he knew i was proud of him.


----------



## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

I was blessed, I was with my Dad when he walked into the University of Michigan hospital for an operation (the last time he walked anywhere). The following day I was there during the annual U of M and Michigan State football game, when they came in and got him to stand up on his feet for what turn out to be the last time in his life.

I was there when they told him, they where successful and got all the cancer. I was the one that found out and told him that he wasn't coming home and the end was coming (they got all the cancer, it had not spread, but you can't live without a liver and at age 78 it's doubtful you will ever get a liver transplant).

My son's got to say goodbye to their grandfather the day after Christmas. The following day, I when to where Dad was at, and stayed for the last 36 hours of his life.

Even with not a dry eye today as I write this, I still cherish the time I got to spend and talk with my Dad during the last few weeks of his life and it has been soon to be 19 years, since his death.

Larry


----------



## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

My dad told me he loved me two times in my life.

The first was at church when the preacher told the parents to turn to their children and tell them they loved them. Took a lot for Dad to do that but he did.

The second time he had listened to a livestock trader and agreed to make a purchase. I went with him to deliver the check and make shipping arrangements. It did not take long for use to realize it was a bill of goods. Dad, being a man of his word was going to follow through. I stepped in and explained things were not as he had been led to believe. On the way home Dad was over joyed with the way that was handled. He said he loved me for the second time in my life, then offered to buy us both a milk shake.


----------



## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

Me & my dad? We never said "I love you" to each other, even though we were close and it was always implied.

I remember when my dad's health was really getting bad in winter of 2011, my mom took me aside and told me, "you'd better tell dad anything you've ever wanted to tell him, his time is near". I talked to him for a while. He told me he felt like everything inside of him was beginning to shut down. I was in utter disbelief. We told each other "I love you".

That was on a Friday afternoon.

I spent all weekend visiting him while he was awake. He died before sunrise that Monday morning.

I remember it seemed like one of those super clear, very cold winter night skies. The moon and stars seemed brighter than normal. My dad was a great guy, a hard worker, never caused trouble, loved my kids and left with all his affairs in order.

Every time we have a brilliant night sky like that, I think of him.


----------



## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

You gentlemen and ladies are blessed to have had the relationships you have/had with your fathers. I was adopted in 1961 because my mother had lost 6 children through 5 miscarriages and 1 still birth, then 2 years later out pops my sister what some would call a miracle back in 1963. This was way before invitro and all the other miraculous of today. As my sister could do no wrong, I could do no right, had a 3.5 gpa in high school wasn't good enough, sister dropped out but that was ok, I played football 4 year starter threw the shot put and discus in track, sister nothing. Sister totaled 3 cars in 9 months. She lived at home till my parents passed. I moved out at 18 went to college, joined the army, got married, raised a family.

My father was a bigot racist, a mean drunk his opinion was always the right and only one, and you were entitled to it even if you didn't want it. He never treated me as an adult, even when my mother and I and my wife tried to talk to him about it he refused to listen. One summer I re-roofed the house, it had 3 layers of asphalt singles along with the original wooden cedar shingles the house was 125 years old at the time did the barn and all out buildings as well. I could on and on.

We had a huge fight my father was yelling screaming said some very rude crude mean and hurtful things about me, my wife, and children, his grandchildren, I looked him straight in the eye and calmly told him if wanted to talk rationally he knew my phone number and where I lived, I then turned my a back and walked out the door, never talked talked to my father again. 7 years later on Memorial Day weekend I get a anonymous phone call saying that if I want make peace with my mom I had better hurry up and get to the nursing home in Bad Axe I was living in Huntington In at the time about almost a 7 hour drive one way so I drive there to see my mom I get there and she's sleeping was going to leave but a nurse said i should stay I did, she woke up looked at me and said " who are you" I said i'am your son, she replied that " she didn't have a son." I got up and left... In July I get another cal this time about my dad, drove up again, got to the home and my sister was there with my dad, I walked in sat down next to dad with sister on the other side, she explained that dad couldn't talk so well irritated throat

so we sat there for an hour just staring at each other neither one trying to say anything...I had to go back to Indiana to get clothes and make arrangement for time off to be with mom and dad who were both in the same nursing home different rooms. Made the 7 hour drive back, made the arrangements for work, got clothes and other things settled was getting ready to come back up when the nursing home called and told me that my dad had died. Even though my father was mean and stubborn I still loved him. My father never told me he loved me nor that he was proud of any thing I had done. The nursing home kept my dad there till I was able to get back and say goodbye, and that I loved him. I stayed in the nursing home from the beginning of July to the beginning of Oct when my mom passed. I found out that my mother was suffering from the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's when I visited in May, the reason she didn't recognized me.

I ask that all who have read that long story please please learn from me to tell your mom's and dad's how much you love them don't let stubbornness or petty disagreements to come between you, forgive forget, it doesn't matter who started what, who's fault it was. Life is to short to hold a grudge especially against someone you love. tell them face to face how my you love them and how much they mean to you no matter what has happened in the past because once they are gone you'll never get the chance to tell them, and saying it over and over in your mind isn't the same trust me. And while your at it tell your children how much you love them and how proud you are of them, tell them a lot so they never have to go through life like I did wondering if my parent loved me or were proud of me.

Sorry for the length and rambling of this post.


----------

