My father passed away when I was 15 years old. My memories of him are tinged with the passage of time. Don't get me wrong; I miss him terribly. Every day I'm with my son I wish he were here to see him. The thought of my father and Johnny getting together makes me laugh outloud. My twisted sense of humor comes from him and I have passed it on to my son.

My father taught me my first pun. Every time we passed by a local funeral home he would always point and say, "People are just dying to go there!" Hey, I was a kid. It was hilarious.

My father was the practical joker. And these weren't idiotic "bucket of water over the doorway" jokes. These were finely crafted twists of reality which sometimes sprung years later. He would often get the younger nieces, nephews and grandchildren to try pulling out their own teeth. For him it was easy as he had a full upper plate. He would simply reach into his mouth and slip out a mouthful of teeth. "Go ahead, you try". It was hilarious to see a circle of little kids yanking madly on their teeth while my father chided them, "What's the matter. See how easy it is. Everybody can do this!"

Even in death my father continued to spring jokes on me. The best had to have been when my grandfather died almost 10 years after my father. He lived to 102. We were all gathered together and talking about Grandpa Eaton when I mentioned something about how cool it must have been for him to have been a cowboy out west. Silence and odd stares covered the faces of everyone in the room.

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of my sisters asked.

"Well, when Grandpa was young he was a cowboy out west around the turn of the century."

"Who the hell told you that?"

"Daddy."

The laughter was deafening. Apparently my grandfather was born in nearby Massachusetts and the only other state he ever entered was Georgia.

I am sure one of those I could hear laughing was my father.

My father had a stroke when he was just around my age. Don't think that doesn't freak me out when I ponder on it. I can still vividly see him sliding himself down the stairs from hiss upstairs bedroom. His pride would not allow him to have the paramedics carry him from his own home even though his legs could barely work. Afterwards, his body was slightly affected but the major damage was done to his personality. He was harder to deal with and had a faster tempter. Again, I don't have much to compare. I envy my sisters having known my father as he was before his stroke.

The one memory of him before that which I do hold onto tightly is probably my very first memory. We would play "elevator". I was probably a toddler at the time. We would lie on his bed and he would lift me up and down above him saying, "Going up.....going down" and making pneumatic/elevator noises.

I did the exact same thing with my son when he was little.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.