Day 34: 11 Years

In following yesterday's post I have yet another remembrance. Eleven years ago today I lost the most influential man I have ever known, my father, Walter Lee Weaver Jr. He battled with a form of cancer called Multiple Myeloma for three years. Ultimately I got a call at about 6PM from my mother that I should get a plane ticket home because Daddy just died... I had spoken to him ten minutes earlier. He was 55.  My dad loved life and spent every moment he could outside doing something with his hands. He taught me many things about the outdoors such as fishing, hunting, and how to correctly landscape a house. Most important though he taught me what it meant to be a good person, a good husband, and a good Dad.

Half the reason I am doing the project is because I feel that I have watched the last decade go by inactively. I sat in a bar til 2AM on a friday night and completely screwed up the next day. I have only recently had the epiphany that there is much more to life than this. I realized that I am not half the man my father was at my age and it has given me the strength to change that. I wonder what he would say to me if he were still alive. I wonder if I have turned out as he expected, and if I would be in the situation I am in right now if he were there as I was making my mistakes. I know that I will never know the true answers to these questions, but I like to think that he would be proud of me for some of my accomplishments. I also like to think that some of my shames would never have happened.

My father was an amazing guy... the type of man you are proud to call "Daddy." He left Mom with a lot on her plate. I have to say that she is the best Mom, and Dad, a guy could ever ask for. She seems to think that what I am doing now gives him reason to shine a smile down upon me from heaven. I know that I was very lucky to have a great dad for 18 years. Some people never know their father, or worse they know them, but wish they didn't. For that I am thankful, and to all the people out there who's father is still around... take the time to tell them you love them. You never know how long you are going to have them for. One thing is for certain, not a day goes by that I don't miss my father, and I wish that I could tell him I love him right now.

I miss you Dad...