Dad

I miss my dad. We had a very rough relationship. My fault entirely. His standard answer when I was growing up was, "No". I stayed mad at him all the time when I was a kid. It wasn't until later on in life I began to realize what a good guy he really was, what a good dad he was for looking out for me and trying to keep from making mistakes. He really loved me, and he put up with a lot from me. I began to realize as I got older there was always a reason for the "no".
I began to realize as I got older the reason for the tension in our relationship was all my fault. He didn't have a book to go by, this is how you raise kids. He was human and learned things by trial and error like a lot of us. No matter how bad a place our relationship was in I always thought he was a very smart man. I wish I had got more of that from him.
I grew up in a very small town and there's not much as far as jobs there. When you graduate from high school you pretty much have to move away to find a job. I moved away as soon as possible and that put even more distance between me and him.
When his health started to decline he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and later Parkinson's. Every time I got back home to visit after that I would tell him every chance I got how much I loved him. With his condition I'm not sure how much of that he remembered. He would always smile at me when I told him I loved him.
Then covid came along and put even more distance between us as travel was slowed down. I would talk to him on the phone from time to time and I always told him how much I loved him. I'm not sure he even knew who he was talking to. Looking back at life there's so many things I wish I had done differently. I wish had called home more. I wish I had went home more. So many things I wish I had said.
Mom called one day and told me he had passed away. All I could think of were all the years that I had wasted. All the chances I had to say I'm sorry. All the time I had to try and rebuild our broken relationship or build a better one with him. All the things I'll never get to say.
Back when there was still time, there was always something that was going on, some distraction. All those years that we'll never get back, wasted, because I always put something else ahead of the things that really matter. I guess in the back of my mind I always thought there would be time to say or do the things I should've been saying or doing right then. But instead, I put them off thinking, there'll be another time. But now there'll never be another time, to say the things I never said.