My Father

My father was born in 1939, at the end of the Great Depression, just shortly before WWII. He was the youngest of 8 children I believe, his mother had several (over 5 husbands) in her lifetime. His own father left for the war with the navy and never returned home to them but got a new family somewhere else.  My father spent most of his younger years in OH and VA, then moving out to California where he stayed most of his teen life.  Then on to Oregon in the 60's, where he met my mom and was married to her in September of 1970. His family was never very well off and as a young boy he was boarded out during the week so his mother could work. He grew up with a very strained relationship to food.

If it was put in front of you, you better eat it mentality. 

 Not knowing where your next meal would come from or when, or if it would be anything you even cared for were the norms for him.

He brought this mentality into our home, and as we were growing up, it was required that you ate what was placed on your plate (and be thankful for it). We would never dream of tossing food, or saying no to what was offered.

I know that there were plenty of times when I was young that food money was tight and we ate what could be afforded. We ate lots of white foods - whole wheat/grain food were not super common then. My father was a meat and potato kind of guy. He loved bologna & cheese sandwiches, potato chips, soda, and the like.

He was diagnosed with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, hypertension and the like pretty early in his 40's. I don't ever remember a time that my dad was not taking medications. He and my mom both tried various diets through the 70's and 80's. It was never about moving more, or eating real food with real benefits.

My father worked hard his whole life, he kept his job at a machinist shop from 1970 all the way through 2003 when he was force into early retirement do to the company moving to TX.

He was a humble man, a gentle giant of sorts. I remember fondly playing all sorts of games and such with him as a child. he suffered a brain injury when I was in middle school that changed his psyche a little and even I believe changed how is body reacted to certain things.  The damage that years of white sugar eating had done to his liver and the head injury to boot, made him act like a raging drunk at times even though he never partook of alcohol.

Please don't get me wrong, I love my father; after years of not understanding how his health interferred with his emotional balance, I finally do now. I am stubborn like he was, and head strong; I love the simple things in life, good food, a good black and white movie ( aren't too many that are bad),  company of the one I love the most, beauty in creation, and quietness (not that either of us had much of that).

Here is a photo of my family, William (dad), Pamela (mom), Ronald (older brother), William - BJ (younger brother), and Chaun (my sister). We took this photo a few weeks before my brother was leaving for Iraq, and only 6 months before my father died.

This week also marks 4 years since my brother's suicide. I will talk more about that this week and how that loss profoundly changed me.