Smile Dads!

As a general rule I hate clichés. In honor of this Father’s Day blog however, I am going to bend my rule and trot out the well-worn adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In this digital era of instant gratification no one wants to sit down and read a thousand word essay if they can look at photo and get the same basic information, and as the aforementioned saying goes, sometimes a picture really packs a more powerful punch. In early July 2015, my father passed away. Two weeks before that, my brother surprised my father on Father’s Day by bringing him the type of breakfast he loved best – tons of coffee with assorted chocolate pastries. He then snapped a picture of my dad with a happy/shocked look on his face and sent it to the family WhatsApp group. It wasn’t a great picture by any stretch of the imagination, but as it turns out, it was the last picture we have of him. When I look at this picture I feel happy, sad, nostalgic, and a whole range of other sentiments that I can’t quite put into words.  This Father’s Day take a picture of your dad, and if you don’t have a dad anymore, dig out an old photo of him and let the memories flow.