one100grand
Well-known member
On March 28, my father went in for a kidney transplant after suffering end stage renal failure for nearly 4 years. The transplant went well and he was released from the hospital only to be readmitted following a non-specific heart event only days after release. This led to him returning to dialysis for a short period of time while his body recovered from all that he'd just been through. During one of these sessions of dialysis on April 15, his blood pressure dropped and he passed away suddenly. I had the benefit of being able to get to know him very well over the past 5 years and I felt like I knew exactly who he was, so it's difficult for me to cope. I know his wishes were always to be remembered positively when he passed rather than have me mourn the loss, so that is my intention with this thread. Of course none of you knew him, but you have your own father and your own memories that I know would do me well to hear.
One of my favorite memories of my father was on vactaion, fishing in Montana. He was always a pretty cheap guy and didn't like to spend money on things he didn't feel he needed, but for some reason he decided that he wanted to take the family out on a charter boat for lake trout in Flathead Lake. I was probably 8 at the time and it was the first time that I even realized that such a thing as charters existed, so I was pretty excited. He and I went to several charter captains to get quotes and learn about what they offered - there was one captain in particular who offered a guarantee that we'd catch fish (which greatly appealed to my dad), but being as detail oriented as he was, he wanted to make sure we explored all possible options to make the best decision. The next captain we went to was a somewhat cantankerous old man who scoffed at the idea of a guarantee on catching fish, he said that he didn't guarantee it because he targeted lake trout in particular. He continued on to say that if we found lake trout and found what they were biting on, we'd catch them, but there's no guarantee of either of those things happening and that any captain that would guarantee catching fish couldn't guarantee that we'd catch what we were hoping to target. I guess that mentality appealed to my father because he decided to go with that captain - he wanted to catch lake trout and realized that someone who knew what they were doing realized the difficulty of targeting something precisely. On what was supposed to be a 6 hour trip, we landed more fish than we could count, several times doubles and triples at a time. The captain himself was so excited he extended the trip (for free) without us asking saying that he'd never seen anything like the numbers we were catching. After we got back to the dock, we had ended up keeping around 75 fish that were all in the neighborhood of 24-30" and we gave the captain another 20-30 fish. The captain made sure to pull my sister, brother, and I aside to tell us to remember this day because if we fished every day for the rest of our lives, we might never see the numbers and size of fish that we caught that day. My dad reinforced that thought as well saying it was the best day he'd ever seen. So every time I go out fishing, I think back to that day and use it as a bench mark to my all time days - I keep a list of my 10 best days ever fishing and inevitably it's one of the top 5 I've ever had when I evaluate that list. My father taught me to fish and how to learn about fishing, but on that day he also taught me that sometimes you've got to rely on the expertise of others (in fishing and in other things) and that's something that I will carry with me for as long as I live.
One of my favorite memories of my father was on vactaion, fishing in Montana. He was always a pretty cheap guy and didn't like to spend money on things he didn't feel he needed, but for some reason he decided that he wanted to take the family out on a charter boat for lake trout in Flathead Lake. I was probably 8 at the time and it was the first time that I even realized that such a thing as charters existed, so I was pretty excited. He and I went to several charter captains to get quotes and learn about what they offered - there was one captain in particular who offered a guarantee that we'd catch fish (which greatly appealed to my dad), but being as detail oriented as he was, he wanted to make sure we explored all possible options to make the best decision. The next captain we went to was a somewhat cantankerous old man who scoffed at the idea of a guarantee on catching fish, he said that he didn't guarantee it because he targeted lake trout in particular. He continued on to say that if we found lake trout and found what they were biting on, we'd catch them, but there's no guarantee of either of those things happening and that any captain that would guarantee catching fish couldn't guarantee that we'd catch what we were hoping to target. I guess that mentality appealed to my father because he decided to go with that captain - he wanted to catch lake trout and realized that someone who knew what they were doing realized the difficulty of targeting something precisely. On what was supposed to be a 6 hour trip, we landed more fish than we could count, several times doubles and triples at a time. The captain himself was so excited he extended the trip (for free) without us asking saying that he'd never seen anything like the numbers we were catching. After we got back to the dock, we had ended up keeping around 75 fish that were all in the neighborhood of 24-30" and we gave the captain another 20-30 fish. The captain made sure to pull my sister, brother, and I aside to tell us to remember this day because if we fished every day for the rest of our lives, we might never see the numbers and size of fish that we caught that day. My dad reinforced that thought as well saying it was the best day he'd ever seen. So every time I go out fishing, I think back to that day and use it as a bench mark to my all time days - I keep a list of my 10 best days ever fishing and inevitably it's one of the top 5 I've ever had when I evaluate that list. My father taught me to fish and how to learn about fishing, but on that day he also taught me that sometimes you've got to rely on the expertise of others (in fishing and in other things) and that's something that I will carry with me for as long as I live.