WHAT IS A FATHER?

That is a big question? What really is a father?
There is a biological father, there is an adoptive father, there is a person in ones life that played a father role maybe even a family friend, or maybe an older brother or a special uncle and on and on.
Each one of us has a different reality of what father means to us.
Some of us with biological fathers as I had have many different experiences. 
Years past fathers were more distant from their children than the fathers of current times. I was born in 1942 so I was lucky if my father paid much attention to me. I was taken care of by my mother and would get a little nuzzle or hug from my father as he ended his work day.
I recall from my earliest experiences those special hugs and little touches that meant so much to me. Any special attention made me feel so special. I always had so much love from my mother so I suppose I expected it and was accustomed to it; sad in a way but that is the way it is. It seems the parent that gives you the least is the one that takes your heart when a little love is finally given. 
So my father was a tough guy or at least on the outside, on the inside I am not sure who he was as he was a very private person.
All I know is when he paid me some attention I was ecstatic. So I suppose even when I was in trouble and he administered the punishment it was still attention in some form. Right?
So therefore was our relationship in my young years. I was either ignored or endured or in trouble.
It was only after I had the life threatening disease of cancer that my father became a friend someone I cared to confide in who would talk with me and console me. I will always remember when I was diagnosed at 36 years of age and he grabbed me up in his arms and began to cry and held me so hard I thought he would crush me and he said, why couldn't it have been me? My heart broke open and I felt so cherished. My father a person I had always loved but was afraid of, who was not always the nicest to my dear mother, who always ruled his home with indifference to what anyone thought. This stern man had turned to putty when my life was in danger.
So from that day on my father and I had come to respect and care so tenderly about one another. Now it was not only the jokes that passed between us, the teasing that drove me out of my mind it something on a deeper level.
When my older brother Jack called me on a stone cold morning in March and told me that my father had passed, I took the information without tears but then huddled down under the covers with the man I am now still with who held me as I cried for my father, a man I think no one really knew. A man who could be tender at times, totally humorous most times, and cruel at times. He was a product of his hard young life. I feel he did the best he knew how to do with what he had been given.
I loved my father no matter how he was at times. It is just the way I am and I am happy I am that way. Yes I would wish he was like fathers today with the hands on approach, so loving and caring and taking such interest. But that was not the way it was all those years ago. So I am thankful for the times we had that did make a difference in my life and I am grateful for you my father, Arthur Henry Nesbitt. You brought me more than you will ever know. My inheritance from you is that strength to endure when the going gets tough, I have your crazy sense of humor and your lust for travel, adventure and reading.
I will count my blessings as I always forever choose to see the positive in all things and I miss you still.
Your daughter.