My father died last year.

He had retired in 1992, and other than the odd teaching gig here and there, for the last 30 odd years of his life, he gathered books, read books, made notes about what he read, and debated his thoughts with everyone.

He was also meticulous in his record keeping. He had binders and envelopes filled with documents from every moment of his life.

Yesterday, I went over to my mother’s house at her request to help her purge. I, unlike daddy, believe in keeping nothing.

We went through his notes. Threw away certificates announcing that he played football (soccer) in elementary school, high school AND university.

Found papers noting my down his salary every year starting from 1969 ($6,000) till 1992 ($61,000).

We discarded inter-office memos announcing new protocols put in place.

I found a certificate proclaiming he had completed a course in Lotus 1-2-3 in the late 80’s.

Found notes stating the name and birthdate (?) of every prophet from Abraham till Muhammad.

We found a letter he had written to the Minister of Finance asking to reduce the rate of withholding tax on pensioners (as well as a reply signed by Paul Martin.)

I found his resumes, and his passbooks for at least the last 15 years. Income tax returns from the 1980’s.

For 8 hours, I sat, and read through what seemed like 1000’s of pages of documents, and made decisions on whether it was a “save”, “shred” or “toss”.

I think I have gotten through maybe half.

I loved my dad. I guess I was reminded of him in a special way. But through it all, every so often I’d say out loud: Daddy! What were you thinking!!! 😃

Afterwards, I stopped by his grave, and apologized. My son said if he knew what I’d done, he’d be turning in his grave. I told him, daddy was probably busy arguing with God about the wordings he used in his Holy Texts, and how they needed to be more precise.

Man, I miss my dad.