Fathers Day - Thanks Dad

It's true, I've always been a sensitive person. Sensitive in nature, but also sensitive towards other people, their feelings, their situations, their experiences. My brothers, one older and one younger, played on that sensitivity with great enjoyment. But then, they were boys, weren't they. My oldest brother named me Dee Dee Budgio when I was very small and the Dee Dee stuck for quite a few years, at least until I started school.

I loved Campbell's Bean and Bacon soup. My brothers did not. They told me it was really dog food. I was young and gullible. To this day, I can't eat bean and bacon soup.

My grandparents (my mothers side) owned some property in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California and we lived in a small house next to theirs. My older brother and aunt (she was just two years older than me) were paid to shoot birds out of the cherry trees with their BB guns. Gross, I know. But, it gets worse. My two brothers thought it would be great fun to push my sensitivity button and so planned a surprise for me. They called me around the back of the barn where they had several birds hanging by the neck that had just been winged. The birds flapped their wings, fighting to free themselves. Yes, I cried for a long time. The really sad thing is tears roll down my cheeks as I write about it. Funny how some things stay with you forever.

Still, as I said, I was a sensitive person. That's why when my father told me I was his favorite child, I didn't run to my brothers and gloat about it. I kept it to myself. Parents are told not to have favorites. And if they do, they are told not to tell or show it. But, I must say, that one statement from my father has held me up in some pretty dark times. To know that you have been someone's favorite is to hold a precious, secret gift in your heart for all of your life.

I now wonder, if I wasn't even his favorite over my mother. I was young, when we would sit under the stars in the night and talk about so many things. However, it didn't take me long to realize that this special bond, these special times weren't shared with my siblings or my mother. I'm really not sure if that was their decision or his. Some might even say the conversations we had weren't age appropriate, but then, they allowed me to know my father in a way that I never would have otherwise and that certainly my siblings do not.

When my father was in the navy, he had two friends, one taller and one smaller than him. They were his buddies. One night there was an explosion on their ship. My father was injured. His two friends stuffed him in a life jacket and threw him overboard. He looked back to see the ship blow up. His two friends were gone.

My father pulled out his wallet from his back pocket after he'd told me this story. "I want you to have this," he said. "Your grandmother gave this to me when I went into the navy."

It was a St. Christopher medal. I have never seen any other like it as I still have it to this day. Quite a fete since I was only seven then. It's square and about an inch and a half long, an inch wide. It's silver and I've never cleaned it. It still has his essence attached, or at least I like to think so. Last year there was a fire across the street from us. We live in the country where people have five acre lots. The fire was started when our neighbor was burning some brush in his back yard and it got away from him. It's dry out here and the fire moved fast. The fire department evacuated our street. When they came knocking on my door to tell me I had to leave, I grabbed my purse, the dog and my father's metal, got in the car and left.

My mother and grandmother were Catholic and taught me about God according to those beliefs. I was so immersed, at the time, that I thought to my self that I would hate anyone who didn't believe in God. I know now, of course, that this is just some really strange way of thinking. But, remember I was very young. One night during one of our long conversations under the night skies, my father told me he was agnostic. After explaining to me what that meant, I pondered about it for some time. How could I hate my father, a man I loved perhaps more than God. I learned to analyze and come to my own conclusions early on. However, this only started a life time of trying to fit in and then falling out because my heart required me to think on my own and not believe something just because someone else said it was so. Oh, I still believe in God. I'm just sure it's not the same being that people believe "him" to be that worship in church ever Sunday. I also know we must all follow our own path, that's why we are hear.

My father was an alcoholic. He drank Jim Beam whiskey for as long as I could remember. His father didn't want him as he was a "mistake" child, conceived during my grandmother's menopausal stage of life. He had holes in his heart that couldn't be filled by any addiction. But, the addiction numbed him enough to get up and move through every day. The last time I saw him, I was sixteen. He died when I was twenty-three.

One night last year while I was sleeping, an angel came to me in the form of a little girl. She said, "Dee Dee Budgeo, your father is waiting for you." She pointed. There was no background, no trees, no walls, no nothing - a void. I followed where she pointed. There he stood, healthy and he looked to be in his thirties. I ran to hug him and held him for what seemed like a long time. I was just me, as I was at that moment in life, not a child or even a teen.

I asked him, "have you seen Mom?" My mother had died more recently. Because I asked him that question, I had another clue that I was not, in fact, dreaming. We were in real time.

He said he had not seen her. When I woke in the morning and took in the full value of the experience, I knew I had actually visited him . I also wondered, because he hadn't seen my mother, if after we leave this life, are we necessarily connected to everyone with whom we've had relationships? Maybe not.

I've thought about the many people who knew or were related to my father through out his life. I know, many thought he wasn't worth much, but then, they never knew how I was changed by him. As far as I'm concerned, he lived up to his contract, he did what he was supposed to do in this life.

I first decided to write this piece as I was looking through my books for some writing ideas. I came across The Writers Idea Book. One of the prompts said to write about the most important person of your life. I knew right away who mine was. Who's your most important person. Will you let yourself be vulnerable enough to share your experience? I hope so. You never know who you will touch or how you will make a difference in someone's life.