April 1999. It was the last time I heard my dad say "I love you".
I never heard my dad say it, but I knew absolutely that he did.
My brother could never say it until shortly before he died this past September, but it was perfectly clear that he did.
I could choose any of countless wonderful, hilarious fishing and hunting trips with him.
I could go back to 1990, ten years before Dad died, so I could sit down with him and a tape recorder and tape hours of his reminiscences about his career as reporter, war correspondent, overseas correspondent, editor, journalism teacher, and later minister.
But I think I would have to go back to Halloween Night in 1986.
I had been dating but not living with a wonderful woman. For several years I would occasionally ask, jokingly, "I don't suppose you want to get married, do you?" She would answer, "No, why screw up a good thing?" Until that Halloween night when she said "Yes." We talked about it and agreed that it was what we
wanted to do. We loved and enjoyed but didn't
need each other. We had lives and interests and friends in common, but also separately. We were each earning a living at things we liked doing.
We married on 24 January, 1987. Four days short of nine years later she died of an uncommon leukemia. But those nine years (and the three and a half years of dating that preceded them) were the happiest time of my life, bar none.
