Smile Everlasting

Today is my father’s birthday. He was born November 25, 1913.

Incredibly, I didn’t know that until he died and I read the date on the card the funeral director handed me when I walked in to my father’s service in 2003. He died about three months before he would have turned 90.

I knew his birthday was in late November. And I knew he was born in 1913. But his birthday was a vague event, something that happened around the time of Thanksgiving. It didn’t have its own space. If it did, my father kept it to himself.

No fuss for Roy. It wasn’t his thing.

This is my favorite picture of my father. He is just a person in the world. Like he’s given no thought to time passing. Had no worry about it and no reason to measure his days.