Quote "Can I consider that as part of grieving or do I disrespect him by having fun so soon after his death?" /Quote

Life goes on. It must,,,, and the best measure of a life is the good we children do in life, the good we create on into the future. We carry on what we learned from our folks. Your Dad's best legacy, is the way you live. Damn, but I wish I could talk to my Dad from time to time these days; but the moral and caring person I am is based on the teaching he gave me.

I am my father's son. He taught, by statement and living example, that if something is worth doing at all, it's worth the very best I can give it.      

I remember a comment I made to the crowd at my uncle's funeral. His signature to letters for most of his life was SOB, for Sweet Old Bill. I told the crowd how pleased I was to see smiles and hear stories being told of the jokes, anecdotes, and incidents that we'd shared with my Uncle Bill, that had brought smiles to our lives through all the past years. His choice to make people smile from day to day, was alive after his earthly passing. Even at his funeral, the smiles he sought in daily life were a present, ongoing proof of his worth. Uncle Bill was a good man, and there were a lot of smiles.

Your father wanted you to have a good life. There's certainly no time marked off on a calendar where your Dad wanted you to be miserable, before you could begin to have a good life again.

For me, the idea of grieving, is that I can't share the good times, right now, with those who've gone ahead. I can't ask advice, right now, from those who gave me good counsel in the years of my growing up. I got a promotion last month that has a 35% pay raise, due entirely to the work ethic I absorbed from Dad's example. I wish I could brag to him, about how well his teaching has guided my life. I wish I could make him proud, about his success as a father.

That I can't tell him he did well, I grieve for. That he's gone for the moment,,,,,,is like when I moved to the other side of the continent to go to college. Communication is slow at present, but it'll get better later I expect.

Jeff Smith