I sit alone reflecting upon a yesterday many years past. A
yesterday filled with the possibility of a tomorrow not yet known. A yesterday
at a small farm with a man whose protection, guidance, and adoration endured without
appreciation from the boy lucky enough to stand beside him. A yesterday with a
man I knew not nearly well enough. A man who seemed to have answers even when he did
not, and who embraced the responsibility to give and sometimes withhold. With a
man I loved and respected and trusted. I sit alone reflecting upon a yesterday
hunting doves with my father.
How little I knew. How little I know. Time proves its fleetness.
It condemns me; my wantonness, my selfishness, my sloth, my apathy. It condemns
me for allowing it to slip away without a struggle. Even the tomorrow of that
yesterday is gone and with it that man I knew not nearly well enough, his body buried
on a prairie hill, his tombstone a reminder of time’s unforgiving honesty.
Caring too long only about my wants and my desires convinced
my heart to fear the place my father now rests. But as I sit alone pondering that
yesterday I took for granted, it seems I miss the place he now belongs to. It
seems fear is but a memory of my own ignorance. An ignorance of love and truth.
That yesterday, the doves flew sparingly and we spent the moment
without words or even action. We spent the moment well. And like that man whose
body we buried on a prairie hill, that moment lives on. That yesterday of many
years past continues to shape today as it whispers of tomorrow’s promise.
Like a shifting image in the morning cloud, we come and we
go, but love, truly understood, lives in eternity.
So as I sit alone reflecting on that yesterday so long ago, I
wait hopeful for the mourning dove, hopeful for the moment that is forever
lived well. Hopeful for love, truly understood.
Dick Cabela October 8, 1936 - February 17, 2014
Happy Birthday, Dad
