Today my dad would have turned 77 years old. He passed away just over 8 years ago, but his birthday seems to always punctuate the end of my my favorite month of each year (Oct 15-Nov 15). It’s usually too hot to start October and can sometimes be too cold to finish November, so I’ve picked a favorite month that doesn’t exist except in my little world.

I don’t remember celebrating his birthday as a child. My only memory of it is when I was too young to be watching Friday the 13th, but I had seen it at my friend’s house on Friday, November 13th, 1981. I remember coming back home on Saturday after spending the night at my friend’s the night before, completely scared out of my mind after watching a slasher film as a 4th grader. (Parents, please refrain from allowing your 4th grader from watching slasher films – I’m forever scarred, and to this day can’t seem to shake my fascination with the Friday the 13th and Halloween movie franchises, but that’s an entirely different post).

That Saturday evening as I returned back home, my dad was home and had just been on one of his first dates with my soon to be stepmom. She was at our house, which was a weird feeling. My dad and I had been living alone in our home for several months. It was weird to have a woman in our home, especially one that wasn’t my mom.

I’m sure my dad was not overly concerned in that moment of the trauma I had just endured watching Jason Voorhees’ mom take out all the campers at Crystal Lake Camp with knives and arrows (poor Kevin Bacon), but I was excited to tell him about it, as well as this new woman that would be in my life for decades to come.

My next significant memory of my dad’s birthday came a few months after his death on November 13, 2016. My son and I went deer hunting together. My son slept through the first couple of hours of the hunt. When he woke up at 9:00AM, he was ready to hunt, and by then I was ready for a nap. I laid down in our box blind dosing off only minutes later to be jolted with a loud boom, with my son proclaiming he just shot a monster. I didn’t believe him until we walked over and found the old brute down just where he shot him. It felt like my dad had talked with God to let us know he was keeping an eye on us. I think about that memory fondly every November 13th since.

I’ve always had a thing with the number 77. Maybe it’s because one my favorite bands is the 77’s. Maybe it’s an old song I remember as a kid from the band Whiteheart called How Many Times (Seventy Times Seven). My lifelong friend and fellow music geek, Jason, had the Whiteheart casette. The casette was baby blue, which we thought was cool at the time, but the song (and band) was a bit too pop for our tastes circa 1986, but the lyrics did stick with me.

I’ll do something today to remember my dad’s 77th. So much has changed since he passed – some really hard and some full of blessing, which is how life goes for all of us.

Let those that you love hear it from you regularly. The world keeps us spinning a lot of plates and busy with “things,” but I would give up a lot to have another day with my dad, especially with the wisdom that I have today. He was a good man and the father I needed. I love you, dad.