To RJC: I still miss you, so much...

Today is Father's Day.

Many have no father to honor, because he is unknown.

War has taken a number of Dads. Age or illness have taken more.

I reflect today upon my own, who was a 'cop' first, then a father.

He has been missing from my life since 1994, when he died on June 7th of that year.

I have had to go on without his wise counsel, but not without memories.

He passed on at 79 and a half, which is considered a 'respectable' life--except those last four and a half years were spent in a nursing home, which was neither 'home', nor a nursing, nurturing atmosphere.

I will never forget the evening. He had experienced a mild stroke (again) and refused to speak English to anyone. He spoke only Slovak, the language of my grandparents.

The attendants at the nursing home may have been bi-lingual, but Dad spoke seven different languages. None of them were schooled in Slovak, much less in English.

The head nurse pleaded with me to speak with him.

He sat in a wheelchair, away from the others, looking vacant and irritated at the same time.

Though I had heard it spoken around me, for over 30 years, I did not speak Slovak.

So I walked up to him and said, "Detective ___, you know who I am?" He looked up and nodded an affirmative (but he did not, and had not known I was his daughter for at least a year and a half).

I continued.

"Detective ___, you can talk to me."

He looked back and forth, rather furtively, then looked me in the eye, and said:

"If we only had a screwdriver, we could get out of here."

He had worked, all his life, to make life better for many people in Milwaukee, WI. He was the 'copper' the people respected, but his bosses didn't care for that. His name, after all these years, is still known in the MPD--Milwaukee Police Department.

I wrote this years ago, even before he passed:

OLD DAYS

Finding my way through this maze
Called Life I look back
To the time I was two and bounced
On your lap
To the rhythms of the Dorseys
Every Thursday night at seven o'clock
Before I slept
In a room with two brothers
Who picked up their pillows
And constantly fought
About who slept next to the wall
That was so cool in the place we lived
Before we moved to the suburbs
Where we could breathe again.

*********

Thanks, Dad, for everything!