Letter From Dad

The other day, I was going through a box of old letters and cards and came across this letter from my father. He was able to write profound words when he wanted to. It's postmark is March 28, 1986, and first class postage was a 22 cent stamp! However, the letter inside the envelope was dated March 27, 1986. This is why I love my father so very much:

March 27, 1986

Dear Tom:

I am setting here staring at the screen of this computer and wondering what words to put up on the screen that will make a sensible letter. You know a computer is quite a machine. It will do wonderful things but in order for it to work a human mind must make it do what it is told to do. This world would be a hell of a place if the human mind was to work like a computer and told what and when to do something. So God designed us so that each and everyone is different. This, I guess, is what makes the world go round. It causes war and peace, love and hate, ugly and beautiful from one extreme to the other but as humans we have to live with one side and the other and anything in between. Sometimes it is very hard for a person to accept this but life must go on and whether we like it or not the world will not stop to let us off. Until the time comes when we have cried our last tear and drew our last breath, then and only then will the worries of this life be over.

Yesterday I was sixty-one years old. I sit here and ask myself what have I learned in three score and one and would I have changed anything if it were possible to live it over. Yes, there are a lot of things that I would change but most are material things. I believe that the thing that stands out most in my mind is to understand love. Some people can express and transmit love and some can not. It is not that it is not there but the means of expressing it is lacking. As you get older these things seem to come into focus more and I guess you begin to see the end of your life and hope that it was all not in vain.

Well Tom, you have just read some of my thoughts on life in general. I hope some of it makes sense.

This brings me to the reason for writing this letter. You mentioned...

[the rest of this is too personal for me to share, but I will save this letter and it maybe someone will want to read it after I'm gone.]

As you can see, I have left all grammatical errors intact, and the content has been unedited. This was pretty powerful stuff. I realize my dad can't write a letter like this now, but I was so amazingly lucky that he was able to--and did--at one time.