Remembering Dad

 

Today is dad's birthday. What a kind and gentle man you were dad. In your quiet way you taught us so much about resilience, patience and love. I think about you so often.  When I look at my roses I remember how you taught me to prune them in the winter. When we walk on the pier I remember how you looked forward to your Wednesday fishing trips with Uncle Walter. When I bake I remember you were the one that helped me bake my very first cake. It wasn't a box mix. It was from scratch. It was kinda awful and we laughed at how flat it was. The important thing that I remember was that you helped me and we did it together.  I remember that you'd ask me on Saturday mornings what I wanted for breakfast and you'd make me a "Denver omelette" and then you'd sit next to me and watch me eat it.  I remember how patient and artistic you were. You made me beaded Indian necklaces on a little loom for my shop and you'd string "love beads" because you said "This is what hippies wear!" Later you'd patiently make little umbrellas out of cigarette packages and chopsticks and later still you made beautiful embroidered pieces at the Bunka  Japanese embroidery classes you took. You planted sweetpeas every year and when they bloomed I fell in love with them.  They remind me of you dad.  Happy Birthday in heaven. You were such a great dad.

 

I was cleaning out some old boxes of correspondance and found this:

"July 10, 2010  

Dear Family and Friends, 

Thank you for your recent phone calls, emails and letters asking about our father, Bill Yamadera and sending your warm words of support.  It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that our dad passed away Friday July 9, 2010.  We feel at peace knowing that dad is now in heaven. 

You are invited to attend

A Celebration of Life-Memorial Service for 

William "Bill" Yamadera

Saturday July 31, 2010

11:00 a.m. Hillside Chapel

Rose Hills, Memorial Park

We hope that anyone that is able to, will join us on the 31st to celebrate Bill's life with our family.

Thank you everyone for your prayers, your kind words of love and support for our dad and for helping us these past few weeks. 

Love, Barbara, Randy and Jocelyn

 

"Sleeping in the forest"

"I thought the earth remembered me

She took me back so tenderly,

Arranging her dark skirts, her pockets, 

Full of lichens and seeds,

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, 

Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

But my thoughts, as they floated light as moths

Among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the perfect kingdoms

Breathing around me, the insects and the birds who do their work

in the darkness.

At night I rose and fell, as if in water,

Grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

Into something better." -Mary Oliver