Happy Father’s Day and Absent Fathers…

Love is never lost

For many reasons…there are absent fathers. Mine passed away in 1980. You never get over it, you just learn how to manage the grief.

While riding in the pasture, way out in the thick of it…I noticed something white, fluttering…it was not a natural shape and I wondered…what man made object is fluttering out here in the brush? Just fluttering…

I rode closer, squinting my eyes, trying to identify it without having to ride all the way over there.

The closer I got, I started guessing…a surveyor’s ribbon, a piece of trash brought in by the high winds? I couldn’t make it out.

Finally, I could tell, it was a white card-like piece of paper hanging from a branch. I guessed it might be something attached to a helium balloon that finally gave it up and drift back to the ground from somewhere in the atmosphere.

Sure enough…someone had taken five or six helium balloons, carefully braided their ribbons together in a once shiny but now faded braid and attached a Father’s Day card to it. It must have been from at least a year ago. I opened it to try to read the message.

I will write what it said if I can see through my tears…

 Dad,

I hope you see this in some way or form.

I know we have missed a lot in the past few years but I just want to let you know I love you and I’m always thinking of you.

Love,

Your son, Justin 

Happy Father’s Day

Card