Although we are still able to see you and hug you, our chats are often nonsensical and random, your eyes sometimes hold clues that indicate you are not really understanding what is going on around you and your words often come out wrong. But, you are still our precious Dad!! It is hard to watch as a man with such gentleness and intelligence is reduced to rambling conversations which don't make sense and wanderings which are at odds with the rest of the world. But our memories of you as 'our Dad' will remain forever in our hearts.
I remember when:
- you had a thick, curly mop of dark hair on your head.
- you would wake early every morning to milk the cows. You never, ever tried to be quiet! You would stomp down the passageway to the kitchen, past all of our bedrooms, the radio would go on, the doors would bang shut and you would be singing songs like "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do..."
- Mum would sit Michael next to you at the dinner table so he would behave! I always found this to be quite puzzling as we were more scared of Mum's wrath than yours!
- You were always the first one to jump up and help out during Mass if a reader was needed or a collection plate needed to be passed around or someone else was needed to do the Offertory Procession.
- You would give Mum a little cuddle in the kitchen. I was always so proud that my Mum and Dad were not afraid to show their love like that!
- Christmas Day would loom with the possibility that you would still be 'doing' hay!
- You knew all of your cows by name.
- You had shingles at the same time as all of us had chicken pox...poor Mum must have been run off her feet!
- You would call out to one of us girls and end up calling every one of us...too many girls?
- You would spend hours tending your veggies in the garden.
- Your kind-heartedness meant that you could never say no to lending a helping hand in our small-town community. You were on every committee possible and everyone loved you!
- You would read the newspaper at the breakfast table...until Michael started copying you and Mum put a stop to it!!
- You would raise your voice to one or other of us! It was then that we knew we had gone too far as it didn't happen often!
- We learned that you had cancer in one of your kidneys and my world turned upside-down at the thought of a world without you in it.
- You held our precious twin boys and consoled me in my grief.
- You were able to hold me and say just the right thing when, twenty-two years later, we mourned the loss of yet another son.
