When I think back on my Father, one of the memories that is the strongest, of course, is his death and funeral.

I was still married to the ex, and we got a frantic call from Mom one night that he was in bad shape, and I should get to the hospital right away. I’d been through this drill before. The tone of mom’s voce told me this was different.

What I couldn’t know was how bad it was. Dad, after twenty seven years of running up the two stories of steps to his locker at the end of the day, had a heart attack on the way. He was gone before the momentum had carried him to the last step.

The last I saw Dad outside a coffin was on that cold stainless mortuary table.

Mom picked out a dark blue coffin, very dignified, and very much a color that Dad would have loved. She took his grey pinstripe suit, gave it to the undertaker, and his Oxblood Wing Tip Shoes.

When we had our private viewing after the wake, late in the night because the people just kept coming, we sat with Dad for the last time, talked to him, left him things to take with him to the afterlife, like a Pharaoh. I slipped a new Craftsman crescent wrench into his pocket. A razor sharp pocketknife. Mom put in a bag of peanut M&M’s, his personal favorite.

At the mass, I gave the priest a eulogy to deliver, because I knew I could not. I’m used to delivering eulogies, I do it more often than I care to, but this time it wasn’t happening.

Anyway, I wrote that eulogy on a typewriter, and I gave it to the priest. he delivered it with tears in HIS eyes. I asked for it back because I wanted to destroy it, so that nobody else would ever hear those words again, but the priest asked to keep them, and I let him.

Six of my Father’s closest friends carried him the whole way, from the church to the graveyard, a couple hundred yards away.

Six men strong enough to break you with their bare hands, sportsmen, roughnecks, millwrights among them. Crying like children as they stood behind the coffin. They took off their white kid gloves and placed them on the lid. As I close my eyes, I can see those six folded pairs of gloves carefully placed there, though it was more than twenty years ago.

I grabbed the polished rail of the coffin with my bare hand, felt it cool beneath my touch, watched them lower the coffin.

At that moment, my guts on fire and my heart ripped out of my chest, I knew I was the luckiest man alive. I was lucky because I had someone in my life- however briefly- who meant so much to me that I felt like death then. Someone I loved so much that even today, it hurts like hell to type this.

But I do. I do so those of you who have lost their fathers will remember. I do so those of you who haven’t, will get your ass up and go see dad- or at least call him- and thank him for what and who he is to you. And tomorrow, don’t forget either.

Happy Father’s Day, Pop.