Sentimental Sundays - Rough Around The Edges

A TRIBUTE TO MY DAD

I really enjoyed figuring out what type of card I'd make with this guy and with the color choices we were given for the challenge.  He's from Dude Time Doodles and they have such fun images.  Our theme this week at SS is a color theme.  Pop on over to SENTIMENTAL SUNDAYS to see the colors that we had to work with and that you will have to work with in your entries.  They were uber fun!

I sent this card to my dad, who had a massive stroke and, well, let's say is not who he was the night before the stroke, when he and I had a conversation after 6 months of not speaking to one another!  Talk about serendipity!  I just had this massive psychic pull that I had to call him and check in to how he was doing and what was up with him and it was a lovely and loving conversation, where I was able to tell him I loved him, as I had come to do in the last few years and he had come to do with me also after we made a very significant agreement with each other, which I will talk about later in this post.  I know my dad was ALWAYS proud of me, my education, my work and how I fought to get ahead of mental illness, my job, and the challenges of having sibblings who abandoned me 20 years ago.  We were proud of each other, even though we shared this love/hate relationship - "that we both accepted and did not punish each other for."  I am my father's daughter...that was the issue!!!! So much alike in the starshine side and so much alike in the stubborn side!  And so it was...

He was this guy on my card as long as I can remember him - he was my hero!  A hero I loathed and a hero I loved...but like it or lump it - we were one and the same!  And fought the same mental illness battles.  We understood each other like no two other people in our family in this arena. haha He always called me Dr. Navi., something I will never forget.  He was always thankful for the medical advise I gave him and I was always thankful how he recognized in the first two syllables of my "hello" how I was doing - well or depressed - and he would tell, yes tell me what to do to care for myself.  Because he recognized depressed people are beyond making those decisions.  He was my champ - but sometimes a champ I had to go away from to balance myself because we are both so strong and "out there" that I hurt him and he hurt me.  But you know what...we would hurt in our respective corners, then I'd call back and he'd just say, "Hi, how've you been doing?  What's up with you these days.  Always accepting, never punishing for going away....because of what I will tell you below about our agreement!

He won't recognize anything on the card, or be able to read it or understand it but when I visited last, he did show the nurses my cards, so there is something that still has pride in my artistic abilities that I inherited from him, although my mother can sew anything she looks at - especially the best curtains, pillows, cushions, dolls etc. So, I guess I, and my own daughter, son and son were all blessed with artistic ability in the forms of  (me) Bohemian Art, (Ayla)Realistic Art and Photography, and (Jordan) Music Making, Commercial/Pre-movie Making, Guitar, and Synthesizing and (Taylor) Psychiatry (ohhhhhh yesssssss - believe me - as a Reverend and an Institutional Psychiatric/Rehab Chaplain - this too takes one heck of a creative mind, soul and spirit!)  Besides, Taylor is also awesome at the African Drums!

So thanks Mom and Dad.

btw: It is only me that is tangential!!!! lol My Professor even put that on my app for a Ph.D in Philosophy!

So this card is for you DAD!  And on its way to the Nursing Home by Mail.  I hope it jogs something in your memory about how you were pre-stroke.  Love you forever and will always keep to our agreement with each other: 

"We will NEVER EVER abandon each other!"

And believe me, I worked for my Dad when I was 18 at his Company on the top floor of the Royal York Hotel and "he was a bad boy!" LOL  But he always went home to my mom for 65 precious years!

FINDING THE ZEN IN THE PEN

Samara

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