Father's Day is coming up in a couple of days. It is a holiday that I have never celebrated. Each year, I see the various post (on Facebook) of different friends and acquaintances wishing their fathers a happy father's day. Some post about missing their fathers who have passed away. Others post about step-fathers who were more like a father to them than their biological fathers. I have to admit that I feel a little twing of sadness and maybe even envy when I see these post. Growing up, I knew who my father was and he was around at times but for all reason and purposes I was fatherless. I have more tramatic and unpleasant memories of him than peaceful and good ones. And yet I loved him. I once told one of my father's friends to tell him that I loved him and I finished the sentence with but I don't like him. A few weeks later, that same friend brought me a hand written letter/poem that my father had written asking how a person could love but not like someone. I was barely seventeen years old but, I knew the answer to this. After reading the letter/poem that my father had written, I sat down and typed a poem of my own. It was titled Love But Not Like. I sent it to him and recieved it back a couple of weeks later. The poem had been crumpled up. He had obviously not liked what I had written. Some people say that a girl's relationship with her father effects how she relates to the men in her life. If this is true, God help me! I say this with a chuckle and smile but to a degree, it is very true. I've often said that I am a show me kind of girl/woman. Words don't mean a lot to me and this personality trait is directly linked to my relationship with my father. A person can say, I love you a thousand times a day but at the end of the day, those words are spoken and if there is no action behind the words, they are just words. I do realize that money isn't what love is about but I also realize that each birthday and Christmas that passed in my young life, I was reminded that I could not play with words. I couldn't brag about words for show and tell at school. Words couldn't hug me or tuck me in at night. Words couldn't wipe away my tears. Words couldn't dance with me at my wedding. Words couldn't... There was a time when I deeply resented my father for all that he didn't do and all that he wasn't. I was embarrassed by who he was and how he chose to live his life. There was a time that I wouldn't have given him water if he had been on fire. Then, there was the time that he died alone in a VA hospital bed at 46 years old. His life and lifestyle had caught up with him and the big giant of a man who had more strength than anyone I had ever known, was gone. I sat thru his funeral without shedding a tear. I was strong and tough and would never let anyone know that I cared for this man who had let me down in so many ways. Yet,on the inside, I was heartbroken. The chance to have a father, the chance to forgive, the chance to put action behind words was gone. I supposed I wrote this blog for my own good this Father's day, but if you are a father, I hope you will give some thought to what your daughter or son would write about you. Would they have more words to remember than actions?