Dreams of the Fathers

"Death steals everything except our stories. " Jim Harrison from
"Larson's Holstein Bull"

Once upon a time there was a family. They seemed content. The father had hopes and dreams that he focused on his children.
He wanted them to have the bright places without the shadows he had lived through. For his children he pretended that there were no shadows. He focused his efforts on his hopes for his children; the future he wanted for them.

He wasn't perfect. He drank. He gambled. Other women found him as attractive as he found them. He tried to focus but he was young and it was much harder to be a good husband and father than it seemed.

He wasn't around his kids as often as they wanted him to be. They resented his absence in their lives.
Their future, as he saw it, was better than his. He believed that there wasn't anything he couldn't overcome. He believed there wasn't anything he couldn't endure.

Life was a miracle and a blessing and a test. He and his children would come through with flying colors.

He knew that pain could be endured; that illness and injury were part of life but not the only parts of life. Wanting and fear and anger and sorrow lived nearby to make brief appearances in his home but were not permanent guests. Life could be so much better for the kids because he would make it so. There was joy and some happiness.
He tried.

There once was a man who helped his children as much as he could before he had to leave them behind. He was not perfect; no one is. And when he left this world he hoped for so much more for his children. In the end, all his children were left with was his story.




Will his story live on?

Who will remember him?

All of us who are alive because of him;we will remember.