My father was Donald Norman Garrett, Sr. He was born on September 26, 1934. He died on June 10, 1993. When I was a little kid, my father seemed magic to me. He was my hero. He knew everything there was to know in the world. He was never wrong. At least, that's how I perceived him. Anything that went wrong, my father could fix. If it happened, he knew about it.

This is a picture of my mother, my father, and my oldest daughter Tricia when she was about a year old. They brought her this dress as a souvineer from their vacation.

Of course, as I grew into my teenage years, I discovered otherwise. That devastated me for a while. It wasn't that he told me he was all those things. I just believed in my mind that he was. There was a lot of trouble and turmoil between the two of us during my teenage years. As I grew to be an adult, though, we made up our differences and became close once again. My father seemed to know whenever there was something wrong with me. When I went home to find out about his cancer, I knew it would be terminal.

My father had squamous cell skin cancer on his face. The doctors told him that, if you had to have a cancer, then squamous cell was a pretty good kind to have; because it was very slow growing. They did surgery on him in December of 1990, and they felt that they had gotten all the cancer out. He had a couple of other surgeries after that. The second surgery involved removing a piece of his jawbone and sampling lymph nodes. There was cancer found in the lymph nodes. Soon afterwards, they found a tumor attached to the optic nerve behind his eye. The discovered that he had a very rare type of aggressive squamous cell cancer. This type grew much more rapidly than most squamous cell types. In fact, the doctors were only able to find two other cases of the same type of cancer.

My father was a strict man, but he also had a great sense of humour. He taught me many things about life. One of my favorite sayings of his that I have repeated many times to my own children was this, "If you fall down in the mud, you have two choices. You can either lay in the mud and whine about being muddy; or you can pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and get on down the road. But if you lay there and whine, you will never get anywhere in life." That made an impression on me then, and it still does. He taught me that bad things happen to everybody, but it's the way you deal with those things that count. He also taught me that you can find humour in almost every situation in life. If you can find the humour, you'll be okay; because it's so much more fun to laugh than it is to cry.

I love the two pictures shown above. The expression on my Dad's face kind of shows you that he saw humour in life. When I was little, my father worked nights and my mother worked days. They worked opposite shifts so they would not have to pay for daycare. As there were four of us, daycare was quite expensive. I can remember during summer vacations, my father would make up the most fantastic games for us to play, or tell the greatest stories to keep us occupied.

Here are some pictures of my Dad when he was younger:

This next photograph is one taken of my father after he had cancer. He lost a lot of weight. He was also a diabetic, which did not help his health any.

My mother was the most important person in my father's life, and he loved her with everything he had in him. Here is a recent picture of her:

The following is from my father's funeral:

And here is Dad's final resting place:

My father was not a perfect man. He had his faults and his own troubles. He was sick a lot, and he was sometimes real grouchy. He was still my father, and he was still my hero. He was funny, and caring, and had a great imagination. I sure miss my Dad. I know he would love the place we bought in the country. I know that, before he died, he made sure that I knew he loved me and that I knew he was proud of me. I made sure he knew I loved him and was proud of him too.

There are days when I will hear a good joke and still think, "I'll have to remember that one to tell it to my Dad". I can't tell my Dad jokes anymore. That's okay, because I know he probably knows all the punch lines now anyway. I don't know if I ever actually told him when he was alive that he was my hero. I believe that, if I didn't, he knows that too.