This week is the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s death. Elmer “Dit” Jackson left us on March 14, 2005 and I still miss him to this day.

He was a working man all his life. I remember him working with his hands all the time. He and my uncle would tinker with outboard motors and he built our house, a brick barbecue in the back yard, and my playhouse in addition to his own workshops.

He was a great fisherman. We would get up at the crack of dawn to drive two hours to board a head boat to go fishing out in the Chesapeake Bay. He and my uncle used to take a little row boat they had built down to the James River often and fish. I am sure the spot and croker he used to catch have finally replenished themselves after 15 years, but he must have but a dent in their numbers all his life.

Early on he was a hunter also. I remember helping him skin squirrels out in his workshop and remember my mother cooking a big pan of squirrel, rabbit and pork chops in gravy. However, when he changed jobs and began working at a government water station that was out in the woods, he began to feed the animals that would come up to the station. And then he stopped hunting all together.

He loved all animals, but especially cats. I grew up with cats everywhere in the back yard. Later, we had cats who lived in the house, and they were always taken care of and cherished. We only ever had three dogs when I was growing up, but we always had cats.

A more kind-hearted man never lived.

He would do anything for anybody. I remember when two hitchhikers were thumbing a ride on the Interstate highway that ran behind our house, he made sandwiches for them and tossed them and a jar of water over the back fence for them. If any of his brothers or sisters (he was one of 11 children)  or any family member for that matter, asked him to do anything, he’d drop whatever he was doing and help them. And all that fish he caught? We ate a good bit of it, but he would always give a lot of it away to friends and family.

Today, the greatest compliment you can pay me is to say I’m like my father, who was truly the best man I have ever known. He had his faults, as any person does. A more stubborn man never lived. But the good in him totally outweighed the bad. And I know I will miss him until the day I die.

Saturday, which was the anniversary of his death, I went to visit the cemetery and I made a pot of his “famous” collards.

Love you, Daddy, and still miss you. But I’m still carrying on in your memory. I always have and I always will.