Father's Day

As the holiday speeds towards us this weekend, I am left thinking about something I want to share with you.  Several years ago one of my parents died suddenly and unexpectedly.  When you lose someone with very little notice it can be very difficult to know if you expressed how important that person was to your life.  I wondered if I had told my parent how grateful I was of their great sacrifice that they had made for my sisters and brother.

We worked diligently on cleaning the house up and facilitated an estate sale before we put the dwelling up for sale.  I stumbled upon a safe box in the deepest recesses of the closet.  It wasn't locked, but I knew I had never seen this box when I lived in this house.  I opened the box and found several documents.  One item was my original birth certificate.  I then noticed several pieces of yellow paper.  I opened them and it was a letter I had written in 1991.  This letter was not long after I graduated from college and 2 years into my employment at J.B. Hunt.  The purpose of the letter was Mother's Day.  Instead of a card, for some reason I decided to draft a homemade version.  The "card" talked about the sacrifice that it took for my Mother to help with schooling and being a single parent to 4 children for much of our upbringing.  This parent had risen from an administrative assistant to an owner of the largest courier company in Texas. It goes without saying that she had done a fantastic job rearing 4 children and now had 4 grandchildren as well.      

As I read the pages I knew she had kept it all these years for a reason.  It was of great comfort that these thoughts had been shared and they weren't chosen by Hallmark.  By some stroke of luck, the time had been taken to put onto paper important sentiments that would last 19 years.  I share this information for one purpose.  Take the opportunity to tell your parents how important they are to you.  Use this Father's Day to tell your Dad how much you appreciate his sacrifices.  Your time is not guaranteed together for any specific duration.

For those of you who have lost your parents already......many of you would give any worldly possession to have one more day or one more conversation with your parent(s).  Make every day count and every conversation uplifting.