My father worked hard all his life and made sure that Mom and the rest of us were well provided for, and I owe everything I have today to him. But early on in my childhood he was very distant and when he was home he was mostly a quiet person. Not to say he was entirely detached, we did a lot of traveling and trips to interesting places, but he rarely showed much emotion.

But as I grew older, I appreciated him a whole lot more. All the personal sacrifices he must have made to achieve the amount of success he had in the Air Force and with real estate really gave our family everything and more than we needed. And even though I had my own problems that a closer connection with my father as a child would have helped, I understand now how hard it can be to balance all of life’s duties. And when he developed cancer in the years before he passed I wanted to make sure he knew I loved and appreciated everything he had done for us. His weekly poker game was one of his favorite pastimes so I joined him to spend more leisure time together. I have some good memories from this time, but once I had shared with him some music I had created and was proud of, but he just thought it was noise and I was sorry I even played it for him because the last thing I wanted to do was upset him at the time. But music has always been a part of my life and I’ve slowly become a better musician just by sheer will. After he had passed, a little piece of music developed within me and I hope he would have liked it better than the other piece I had played for him. I’m starting to record my own music and trying to play as many of the instruments myself because they’re not doing any good just stuck in my head.

Anyway here’s the one I wrote after my father passed, It’s a rough recording for now:

And here’s the one he didn’t like: