Bye Dad

My Dad finally passed away on Good Friday of 2010. I had seen him less than a week before and he had stopped talking and seemed only minimally conscious.
I miss that Dad who enjoyed life so much.
If I wrote an obituary for him I would definitely include a fact that he was very proud of. Dad sailed his own boats on the Great Lakes for 50 years.
I really don't know how he learned to sail, but he always seemed to know what to do.
As a young child and later as a teen aged girl I remember riding out some fairly fierce storms while we were out sailing.
Times when the waves would be so high that the boat would work to get to the top of a huge wave all the while feeling like it wanted to just slip back down that upward slope. Then cresting the wave and at times shuddering and humming as it slid down that mountain of water. I was certain that we would just go right to the bottom of the wave and then the boat would keep going until we were under water.
Times when the boat would heel over because of the amount of wind and I was certain that we were going over. Dad would assure me and then re-assure me that we would not tip over. Many sailboats have a thing that is named a keel in the middle of the bottom of the boat. It is shaped somewhat similarly to the wing of an airplane, but is not as long as an entire wing. I did eventually figure out though that the higher the keel was pulled out of the water the more area and weight that would be exerted on the leaning sailboat.
At times we would be sailing over lakes entirely shrouded in fog. Freighter ships aren't really all that loud as they power along. I was frequently scared that we would encounter a freighter coming quietly through the fog and that disaster would result.
Dad had an interesting implement that he hauled up the mast whenever we were in this situation. It was something made out of metal and he called it a radar deflector.
Great Lake freighters do have radar and the deflector was to help our relatively tiny boat show up on their radar so that we would not get creamed.
I still have one message left on my cell phone voice mail that Dad left me. It was from last year. Dad called me the weekend that he would eventually end up having his stroke and was wondering what I wanted to do for my upcoming Birthday as it was only about 10 days from the day of his phone call.
Dad died this year one day before his wife's Birthday and six days before my Birthday.
For my Birthday I would have wanted and still want the happy Dad who was such a fan of steam trains and sailboats.
I knew him for all of my 44 years and I still feel like the time just flew, and I can't imagine ever having a day where I don't miss him.