My Father

 I had been prepping all my life for the death of my parents. When one day the hospital called and said come see your father if you want to see him alive again. So I did. I got to see him. I told him that I was ok now, and would be ok later. We had made peace about 10 years before that. We were in a good spot, Which was funny, we were never really in a bad place, we just didn't see eye to eye. I got a call a week later from my mother that he had passed. So I drove 4 hours through the early morning hours, crying and mourning my father. All that prepping that I had thought I did, turned out to be a lie. Because I wasn't prepared at all. My father and I were tight. We were both truck drivers, worked outside at manual labor. We both had an appreciation for classic cars. My father was a a hot rodder and a gearhead from the 1950's. We went to car shows together. The last one we went to was the Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale AZ in 2007. We had the best time, as we always had. We worked together, we did recreation together, we discussed life together. After his passing, I had, and still to this day have no one in my family that relates to me. No one wants to go to car shows, or talk about truck driving, or cars, or anything else. My father worked his entire life to make it easier for all of us, and it took about 10 or so years off the end of his life. He knew it would, but he did it anyway, because that is what good men do. My father wasn't perfect, lord knows, look at me, and the problem child I was. he did his best with what he had, and he was always taking care of us. he was a good man who recognized good and fostered it, and saw need and tried to help. Thank you Mr. Gen X talks, you and I are a lot alike.