Father's Day: Shooting the shit with my father

I think the thing I miss most about my father is sitting in his living room laughing and shooting the shit. He too was an artist. He was very practical and although he didn’t believe in Buddha, he kind of thought like a Buddhist. He would say things to me like “If it hurts, stop doing it”. “If you want to lose weight, eat less and move more”. He was a very practical man. When I’m struggling with something I’ll think about what he would tell me to do. It’s as if we’re back in his living room. His advice was solid.

Of course, he came from a time when paying six bucks for a cup of coffee at Starbucks would be considered nuts. “You can buy a whole can of coffee for four bucks…a whole can!” My father loved that I was a musician and painter. I often kidded him about the time he insisted I take back my first dulcimer and get my hundred bucks back. He said I was wasting my money. I would ask him when he asked for free tickets to my shows at the Kravis Center in Florida, “Do you want cheap seats in the balcony or up front? How about a back-stage pass?” I actually got my sense of humor from him.

This photo was taken a few days before his big 90-year-old birthday bash. A few days later he said to me “Kev, I’m washed up”. He had ‘old persons cancer’ and a few other issues. He then told me when you get old that what you are left with are memories. His birthday was May 1, and he passed away on August 1^st

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Everyone loved my dad. He wasn’t without his faults as are all human beings, but he was a great dad and friend. And to this day his sense of humor still makes me smile. I wondered yesterday watching the hundreds of thousand people march against trump what he would think. Probably that trump is a piece of shit and that he won’t last long. When I ask him now, what I hear is ‘Don’t even pay attention to him. It’s all going to work out”. My father was a wise man.