Requiem

My father passed away last December.

He would have been 75 today.

His parents, my Mémère and Pépère, met in WWII. It was the classic wounded American GI meets a French nurse and then nine months later my dad is born in Paris.

He grew up in Europe, mainly in Great Britain. He spent his summers traveling around the Old Continent on motorcycles.

He came to the United States to live for the first time (although born a US citizen) to attend college at Georgia Tech. It was there he went on a blind-date with a lady attending Emory.

Months later my future parents were married and dad was off to the Army.

While it was the height of Vietnam, he taught air defense artillery in El Paso, Texas. Thankfully he never had to deploy.

Else I might never have been.

After concluding military service, he worked as an engineer for an aluminum company for a short time before joining the FBI.

He loved that shit.

He loved it all. The mission. The camaraderie. The training. The stake-outs. The long nights and early mornings. All of it.

And when he got older, the typical government thing happened.

He got promoted and put behind a desk.

Which he hated.

He was one of those people that never really figured retirement out. Without his work, nothing else really measured up, I guess.

While it’s certainly sad to not have him around anymore, he lived a cool life.

And I’m eternally grateful I got to call him Dad.

If you’re out there somewhere, I love you Dad. You’d be proud of the man I am becoming.