I can’t believe it. Today is my dad’s 67th birthday. I don’t know about you, but 67 sounds kind of old. When I’m around my dad, he doesn’t seem 67 to me; he seems much younger. His voice is still as strong as it’s always been. His grip is like a 20-something-year-old’s. He has a lot of childlike qualities, for better or for worse. His hobbies include model railroad and caring for tropical fish. He has boxes and boxes of unopened model railroad parts all over the basement, and two large tanks of tropical fish that he’s still adding to. He can spend hours tinkering with all of these things. Maybe it might seem like a 67-year-old’s hobby to some, but when I watch my dad taking care of these things, he doesn’t seem that old at all. He seems like a little kid in a big person’s body, wondering how he got to be this age and this old. Where did most of his hair go, and how did he get those wrinkles on his face? How did he get married and raise two children with his wife, and have to go through the untimely death of his first born?

It’s hard to watch our parents grow old because we know that inevitably, they will not live forever and will die like the rest of us. Each birthday of my dad’s that passes now, as awful as it sounds, the first thing I think about is that it’s another birthday that my brother never lived to see, whether he wanted to see it or not.

To more and more of my dad’s birthdays that Ed will not see.