A gentle man

My Dad was a deeply wounded man.  Adopted into a cold family; he did the best he could, but his emotional scar tissue didn't allow for much real connection.  In death I feel that he and I are free to relate  on a more essential level.
He was an introvert who had a naturalist's eye, as I do.  He saw variations of leaf and color; was able to identify mushrooms.  He loved to dream up projects in wood and other wild stuff.  The cabin he built by hand before I was born, had deer hooves as door handles; whatever you  might think of that aesthetic, it was the way he liked to play with making things out of wild and natural stuff.

He loved to think about how to make things.  Electronic "Heath kits",  cooking with exotics,  peeled grapes, beef kidneys, fiddle heads, he loved to fool around with making stuff.  He definitely had the pallet and curiosity that fostered our family's cooking gene.

But mostly he was a gentle man at heart who had bursts of anger at all the injustice he'd experienced.  He wanted to be a good man who would be respected, but on some level didn't really care what people thought.  He wanted what he wanted and never really learned how to empathize with others. But he wanted to.  Freed of his old psychological scar tissue, I imagine him full of curiosity, ready to be done with this world and move on.