A Thermometer for Every Occasion

I wish that I could have shared him with anyone who needed to be loved because he certainly had enough love to go around for everyone.

No pre-conditions.
No questions asked.
He just loved everyone unconditionally his entire life.

I miss him standing at the door at his old house in North Carolina watching our family leave in our car, just to make sure that we get off safely.

I miss his Little Debbie oatmeal cakes in the cookie jar and how the jar was always full.

I miss watching him read anything, quietly.

I miss being able to lean underneath the hood and ask him a thousand questions about cars and anything while he worked on his car.

I miss ironing and starching his shirts when I was first learning to iron and how he never complained about how stiff they were

I miss him always telling me what the experts said about everything.

I miss watching him crack out and cut up pecans for my mother's pies.

I miss eating peanut butter crackers with him on the stairs and seeing him get all mad at me when he knows that I ate the last piece of pecan pie.

I miss ice cold Pepsi Colas in the bottle, carefully placed in the back of our refrigerator that was the coldest part, and how he kept the new and used bottles in the wooden Pepsi crate on the floor by the dryer.

I miss how quiet he was in the car whenever we went somewhere and how he would always tell my mother how our picnic lunch of fried chicken, potato salad, pecan pie, and cold ice tea in those funky green, Thermos cups couldn't be any better.

I miss how he always stopped at the same place in Tallulah Gorge for the picnic and assured my mother that we get to her mother's by dark.

I miss how he always had change to give me for my bank and how he would cash his checks and leave the money in the envelope on his dresser.

I miss him waking me up to get ready for school in the morning even though I made him late for work most of the time.

I miss seeing him pass the Lord's Supper and how his countenance changed when he was in charge and had to say the prayer.

I miss how he trapped squirrels in cages, released them a mile away and then wondered why he could never get ride of the squirrels in his yard.

I miss how he always cleaned his plate up until the day he died and how he tried up until the end.

I miss his bird feeders and how he always had the biggest robins I have ever seen in his backyard.

I miss how neat and tidy his yard and house were and how he always planted with the Farmer's Almanac.

I miss how he shelled out beans for seeds to plant the next year and how he dried tomato seeds from good tomatoes and started his own seedlings.

I miss how he loved any kind of tool and how he could fix anything.

I miss how he saved every television and radio he ever owned and tried to keep them in working order.

I miss how he snored and how my mother complained about it.

I miss how he would fart and laugh, then apologize and how my mother gave it a name which I will never know what it meant because I knew it would embarrass him if I asked what it meant.

I miss how he would carefully and delicately wind a clock as if it would break like a small child.

I miss his smile when my children were in his arms and how patient he was answering their questions.

I miss drinking tea with him at night or eating a bowl of milk and crackers.

I miss how he spoke about his family and how and where he grew up and telling me how the good Baptist of North Carolina took care of him and the children in the orphanage at Christmas time.

I miss how a neighbor, salesman, the cleaning man, my friends, the preacher, always went home with something whenever you came to our house.

I miss just sitting in the room with him, talking and listening to the same stories over and over again and how consistent they were.

I miss him saying." Well honey, I love you too," whenever I would tell him I loved him.

And, oh how I miss all those thermometers as he had one for every occasion.

Dia linn...daddy..dia linn!