It was August 1972 when I was in between my junior and senior year in high school. My dad was on vacation and had had a great week. Mom, Dad and I had spent lunchtimes up to our elbows in BLT sandwiches made with Mom's homemade bread, toasted, crisp bacon and tomatoes from our garden which I remember as the most perfect that ever existed or probably ever will. I came home with my mom from swimming to find my dad on the floor, and that was it.

I don't remember that much about him. Not specific details, anyway. I remember when I was little I spent late Sunday mornings on his lap 'reading' the comics, with the sun streaming through the big French windows. I remember 'helping' him do woodwork in his shop in the basement. I remember him teaching me to eat tomatoes straight off the vine as if they were apples and I remember how he showed me to plant seeds. Once, I went fishing with him and I caught two big (well I thought they were big) carp. One went back in the creek and the other one didn't make it. My dad buried it under a small tree and said it would help the tree grow. I remember my dad going in that very same creek with the riding lawnmower when he got out just a little too far on an overhanging bit of ground. He and the lawnmower were fine, but he lost his trust Zippo lighter. I found it a few years later while swimming. It still worked.

I guess I can still remember a few things after all. The main thing was that he loved me and I knew it, even when I was a teenager and got into arguments with him over damned near everything.