When do you feel it?

[roygage]

Wrote this the summer following my fathers death, thought it likely some of you have plowed the same ground

I have been helping Will put up some new fencing in a dry lot, lots of big pieces of steel so the cutting torch has been the weapon of choice.
Saturday morning I am working by myself when the
torch popped and went out, without thinking I twisted the
oxygen valve shut while quickly pushing the tip towards a
hot piece of slag to relight it.

I felt a lump in my throat as I realized this was my fathers way, how often as a young boy I had watched him quickly relight his torch in this same
manner, his sure hands reacting instinctively just as mine
had.

Now he is gone,still, somehow in me a part of him lives
on. I stood for a moment, reflecting and feeling, then
went ahead cutting my holes.

When do you feel it?

 

[Sutol]

Not quite the same but my son died three years ago at 34 years old.

I still cry when I do things that we would have done together and I miss him badly, I dont think we ever really get over losing people who were very close to us

 

[Thomas]

Seems the older one gets more often one reflects...as the old saying goes.."taking time to smell the roses"

 

[deereman75]

My grandfather died a few weeks ago. He was a very skilled carpenter. My father and I have felt that a few times in the wood shop.

 

[Shield Arc]

Not quite the same but my son died three years ago at 34 years old.

I still cry when I do things that we would have done together and I miss him badly, I dont think we ever really get over losing people who were very close to us

No parent should ever have to endure that! So sorry for your lose!

 

[dex3361]

I was walking in the woods here in the hills of WV on the property that my Dad and I built fence on when I was 12 or so. I saw some fence still in tact and had to smile at the memory of the days we spent digging post holes setting and tamping the black locust posts. Stringing the barbed wire out and nailing in the staples. I can remember it like it was yesterday. My Dad died when I was 16 years old and I am 50 now. Time sure flies. The thoughts that make you sad at first will make you smile later.

 

[roygage]

Not quite the same but my son died three years ago at 34 years old.

I still cry when I do things that we would have done together and I miss him badly, I dont think we ever really get over losing people who were very close to us

My heart goes out to you, my favorite cousin whom I grew up next door to lost her 17 year old son, a favorite of mine, this summer in a farm accident.

Both her and her husband struggle with it every hour of every day, I go when I can and just listen.

 

[Cat_Driver]

As a kid I watched my dad argue with the junk yard counter guy trying to beat the price down by 25 cents. I used to be mortifies as a kid. I would crawl in any hole to avoid that type of confrontation / negotiation.

Fast forward a few decades and I realized today I am just like him, and because of that, my Dad has saved me many, many thousands of dollars just by negotiation a lower price.

My Dad never dad an education and one thing that is more valuable than a College education is the art of negotiation.

Thanks Dad, you would be proud of me making my daughter a tough negotiator following in your foot steps.

 

[rhett]

When do you feel it?

Every Day !!!

Memories are an awesome gift !!!

Way too many to share, good or bad.

 

[Garybake]

Constantly and after years of adjusting to that missing feeling now I look in the mirror (or pictures of me) and I see him. Makes me proud and a better man.:thumbsup:

 

[Bob77064]

Not quite the same but my son died three years ago at 34 years old.

I still cry when I do things that we would have done together and I miss him badly, I dont think we ever really get over losing people who were very close to us

Sorry to hear that my friend. My Father died when I was 16 and I know what it did to his father.

 

[Redneck in training]

I spent my childhood in father's machine shop, inhaling second hand smoke and listen to guys badmouthing the regime (in old Czechoslovakia). My father was a dreamer whose dreams were shattered by the regime. He died young at 52 years of age. Today I live in the US a it seems to me I am fulfilling his dreams. I just built a shop and I am saving money to buy few CNC machines. I wish he was still alive and see it. I look at my hands and see his hands. I look at old photos him standing and I stand just like him. I think about him often when I do stuff his way. He was excellent self taught machinist. He built the motorcycle on the picture, including engine, telescopes, brake drums etc. sometime around 1950. I think only the rims, spokes and the gearbox were not made by him. I think the design was ahead of its time.