Hippos and stingers...that's my dad

(So the hippo picture made you look, right? It'll make sense in a minute and on another day, I will tell you my special connection to hippos in tutus.)

I usually try to just gloss over Father's Day...skip church because I hate to make a mess of myself crying and church'll just get me every time, on just any ol' Sunday. Last night, as I was thinking of anything possible (I was even dreaming of the day I'd be able to go out and do yard work...shows you how much I hate studying Finance), I started thinking about Father's Day. I'm not going to go all deep here, but in October my dad will be gone for 6 years. At 27 I was devastated. At 33, I can still be devastated if I think on it too long. It was such a traumatic event and it still sneaks up on me every once in a while. I started going to school for my MBA to give me something else to think about. It seems fitting that I escape Finance by remembering him.

The thing about my dad that I remember is that he was so funny with an off the wall saying like "I'm just hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit" or "A hippopotamus may not have a stinger, but one would rather be sat upon by a bee" or "It takes a big dog to weigh 100 pounds but not a very big horse". I don't have the flair to work them into conversation the way he did, but I wish I did...colorful, right? (If they mean something offensive to the people who actually understand them, I apologize up front. You could never really tell with my dad!)

Anyway I found these quotes, too.

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. Anne Sexton

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes. Gloria Naylor

And, uh, since I just said I skipped church Sunday, how about a Bible verse?

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
1 Thess. 4:13