It’s another Father’s Day without my dad.
We lost him to cancer when he was 51. I was 22, and my younger sisters were 20 and 13. I am now older than he was when he died.
Every time I hear Diamond Rio’s “One More Day,” it makes me ache for that kind, easy-going, quiet, simple man who taught Sunday School, was a deacon in our church, played baseball, tinkered with home projects, and chased a joyful flock of kids around the yard at dusk as he pretended to be the big, bad wolf from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. Childish squeals of delight rang into the summer night as we all — my sisters and neighbor kids and me — delighted in the fact that we could “escape.”
His was not the life of a high-powered CEO or politician or world traveler, but he was the world to us. The oldest of five children growing up in Amelia County, he was a child of the Depression who quit school after eighth grade to help support his financially-strapped family before enlisting in the Navy as a teenager to serve during World War II. Trained as a gunner on the USS Wisconsin, he traveled to exotic places around the South Pacific while the world was at war and, when it ended, he came home to Virginia, settled in Richmond, married our mother, and raised three daughters.
One of his joys throughout the years was traveling to southwest Virginia to attend the Galax Fiddler’s Convention. He would join up with our Grayson County relatives and spend hours listening to musicians from near and far play bluegrass music, a genre I didn’t fully appreciate until long after he was gone.
His other joy was camping in Shenandoah National Park. We could not afford pricey vacations so our parents took us to the mountains from the time we were very young. Dad was a naturalist before it became fashionable. He was mindful of those protected surroundings in the Blue Ridge Mountains, teaching his girls to leave the flowers for others to enjoy, pack out our trash, be respectful of the animals who lived there, and most of all to enjoy the beauty that is Virginia. To this day it is still a special place for me.
Diamond Rio’s song sharpens the realization that if I could have just one more day with him, it would be sitting around a campfire in Shenandoah National Park as the sun lowered behind the Appalachians across the Shenandoah Valley … one more time.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Miss you still.