Terry Hess 1939 - 2007

Have you ever evaluated your life and wondered. Thought about your parents and wondered. It's hard to love someone and at the same time still be mad. It's hard to believe someone to be a good and still hate the person they are to you.
My father was a good man. He would have given anyone the shirt off his back. He would stop in a down pour to change someones flat tire. He would have fed the homeless wanting food.
My father was an ass. A selfish man. He would spend his pay check on his own needs and never consider anyone else. He left his family to do what made him happy. My father was my father. And now - he is gone.
My father was raised in a lumber camp - brought up to think that all that matter was brawn and not brain. He played football in high school and was good - but messed up his knee his junior year and therefore dropped out. He worked as a trucker. He drove the ice roads, he hauled expansive loads. He was a saw filer. Working from every mill from New Mexico to Missouri all the while dragging his family along.
I joke that I saw more of Northern America before I was 3 then I've seen since. I lived in New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, was born in Washington, Idaho, Colorado and Montana.
My mother forced my father to settle in Sacramento. And his roving self did for close to 10 years - but that wasn't him. And so when he lost his job, he worked out of state while my mother and I dealt with the reality he left behind. Or rather, I dealt with the reality he left behind. I learned to upkeep the house, I learned to pay the bills and I learned how to make sure my mother was okay and didn't kill herself - all the while he ate steaks and ignored his family.
I shouldn't expect less. I mean look at his parents - the grandparents I hated. The grandfather I was scared to death of. The man who frightened my entire childhood. The grandmother who compared me to her other granddaughter constantly and thought a great Christmas present for me at 12 was a collage of own school pictures of myself.
My father who moved away from the only child he had a relationship with. And then refused to take ownership of his actions.

My father was a son of a bitch. And I loved him and will grieve his death endlessly.
Terry Ernest Hess
Past Master American River Lodge F&AM, Scotish Rite, Shriner, Father PHQ I.O.J.D.
April 2, 1939 - October 2, 2007