Thank you for making my father. Thank you for taking me fishing and thank you for letting me touch the metal plate in your leg. Thank you for all the great War stories about monkeys in the South Pacific and ditching embassy cars over France to avoid enemy fire and trading food for wine in Italy (who wouldn't?). Thank you for all the $100 birthday and Christmas checks (I spent them all in one place). Thank you for the subscription to National Geographic. Thank you for your coffee table books about dinosaurs and cave men and science. Thank you for all the heated political discussions at all the holiday dinners and on and on and on. I am sorry that i never had the chance to meet your lovely wife but she was gone long before i was born. I'm sorry that Bob had to die before you but then again we all do. I am sorry we did not have as much time as we could have had but life takes us places we don't expect and that often means distance is involved and on and on and on. I envy your life. I envy that you had sons and a wife. I envy that you saw the world from the cockpit of an airplane. I envy the lenglth of your life (90 years) and I even envy the amount of morphine you received in these last few weeks (who wouldn't?) and on and on and on.
