Happy birthday dad

My dad would have been 64 years old today.

It’s also the 20th anniversary of the last Presidential election that he voted in since he chose to take his life nine months before his birthday and the 1996 Presidential election.

It’s strange, but I can’t ever remember us discussing politics.

I feel confident that he voted Republican – I’m a Democrat – but in 1992, as I was truly soaking up the first Presidential election that I truly understood as a high school freshman, he may well have voted for Bill Clinton.

I’m sure my mom knows, but it’s these random things and times that the journey of losing my dad as an 18-year-old actively continue.

In the same way that I thought about him quite a bit when we first bought our house, and I was a homeowner for the first time, I think about what he would have thought about this Presidential election.

How would we discuss it?

Would we argue as we did when I was a mouthy teenager or would we be able to discuss it truly as adults?

This is my dilemma and my struggle.

I didn’t know my dad well enough to know the answers to these questions, and I didn’t get the chance as an adult to see how these conversations would play out.

On this anniversary of his birth, I miss him, but I still don’t know him.

These two things will always ensure that my grief journey is ongoing.

I’ll always miss him, but I’ll never get to know him.

Happy birthday Dad. Wish you were here.