Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of when my Dad passed away. It’s also the day I fly to attend WordCamp San Francisco and in all the excitement I’d completely forgotten the significance of the day.
That’s alright and it’s good. In my immediate family we’ve never been concerned about such dates. The thing to remember is the person and the impact they’ve had on you. You remember their life and not their death. That doesn’t mean I don’t remember Dad; not a day goes by when one of us will say something like “Grandpa could fix anything”.
Dad’s hobbies where simple: learn how to build anything that he needed to make or repair something else. He was an electrical engineer and that often meant he would write his own custom assembly language compilers for some EEPROM he needed to program. Or test different paints for cooking a 1930’s radio chassis in the oven to reproduce the right wrinkle effect. Did you know that you can bake some clear plastics to remove the cloudiness and make it more transparent and new?
I don’t have that level of expertise in my hobby but I knew that Dad understood why I like to get involved with WordPress. He would approve of my attending a WordCamp (I only started at WCNYC this year) because you can’t ever stop learning new things.
That’s a recurring theme in my family: learn new things and do those things you like to do. That’s a large part of what my family taught me and I hope I pass that onto my children. That’s what I’ll remember tomorrow and how I’ll observe the day.
