Many of you will understand why this has not been an easy one to write. Father's Day was not the same this year...I'm sure it will never be the same as it was when my Dad was living. Some of us spent the day with Mom and that was a very special time. We didn't have any of our children in town but that is something we have learned to accept when they live in Washington, DC, Oceanside and Ridgecrest, CA and wherever the Air Force has our son, Daniel, at the moment. We didn't see them on Mother's Day this year either. But, we did have everyone together for Independence Day this year. So, that was our Mother's Day and Father's Day, Grandparents Day, and whatever other special occasion we would like for it to be. And, special it was! The last "Father's Day" I will remember with my Dad was last December when the four James Tyre Denneys were able to get together in Kentucky a few days before Christmas. All this reminded me of one of Dad's articles that was published in the Anderson News on June 14, 1989:
Father's Day came to our house a week early this year. I don't think anyone planned it that way, it just happened. All my J's, except Jody who showed up even earlier on Saturday, were home this past Sunday, a week early. Next Sunday they'll all be scattered to the four winds again. So, even though no one said anything about it, I took it for Father's Day. Father's Day still doesn't come easy to me. The memories I have of Daddy and those long ago days at the Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church in Heard County, Georgia, on the third Sunday in June, which coincided with Father's Day, still tug at my heart strings. I didn't know it at the time, but I was storing my memories in my bank that are priceless. Now they come sweeping back with interest. Recalling being smothered half to death in the ample bosoms of snuff-dipping great aunts is far more pleasant than when it happened. Pleasant, yes, but having to admit that those days are gone, never to return, isn't.
Neither is the fact that the days when my children were small are gone, too, The daddy in me longs for the day when the sound of little patter-feets filled the house; instead of their memory causing a lump in my heart. I'll always be convinced that the best days of a man's life are those he spends raising his children. I have no objections about these I'm living now. Grown children are a blessing and I know the memories of today, stored as they will be, are just as priceless as those of their childhood. They too will come back one day--with their added interest. But it doesn't alter the fact that our Lord certainly knew what He was doing when He made it such that we would have little children come into our homes where we could love them, nurture them, love them, feed them, love them, enjoy them, love, and then love them some more, for 18 or 20 years or so. He did know what He was doing.
So, on this day that was Father's Day to me, a little misty-eyed remembering didn't hurt at all. Nor did it to say one more time to each of them, "Honey, I love you." Or, to borrow a phrase, "Thanks for the memories."
