Apostrophe To Dad

I think of how it was ten years ago just after you departed. All your close friends spoke of your "complexity" and we knew what it meant. I look far back to childhood when those small-town midwest Methodists would call you "Revrund." Well they knew of turned-on tears so common in the meeting hall; but did they know about the "turned-on" ladies when you came to call? I know. You needed time with them. Two small churches took so much with little left for us; I still recall the single three hour evening when you took me out of town alone --to still another church! There came a time for change; as a chaplain in the army, far away from mother, there you quickly found the antidote for loneliness...and yet again, and again, again... And then so late in life, about to lose your second wife through age and frailty, you saw another, caught her waiting in the wings, you thought. All through those years you toiled (if not quite single-mindedly) in dedicated sacrifice for God (if not for family). How you were loved! Clay footed, to be sure, yet everything you did was passion-filled; you wept and prayed and laughed and played, presiding to the end. Complex, you were, indeed, my father, the record clear and true and I for one, will judge you not. for I am much like you! ~