In the United States, in June, we celebrate Father's Day, a point in time that we stop to commemorate and pay tribute to our Dads.  June also marks the month in which my own Dad celebrated his birthday.  With this said, 2006 marks the first year that both Father's Day and my Dad's birthday came and went without my father actually being around.  My Dad died in September of last year after a rather long illness.

In any event, with the convergence of my late Dad's birthday and father's day in the same month, I enjoyed ample opportunity to reflect on my father and the impact that he had on my own life.  When I take the time to so ponder, I always seem to come back to the last real conversation that I had with my Dad a few days before he died.  Although my Dad did end up dying in a hospital, he was able to be at home with our family until only a couple of days before he passed on.

On the Sunday directly before my Dad died, I took him for a walk along a lovely path that borders a canal near my parents' home in Denver, Colorado.  He was unable to walk for long distances; our out of doors excursions were conducted with my Dad in a wheelchair and with me pushing him along from behind.

The day proved to be unusually warm for a Colorado September.  After spending a while making our way down the canal road, my Dad caught sight of a large cluster of trees, blocking the sun and creating a large swath of refreshing shade.

My Dad pointed out the trees and the shade and said that he wanted to stop under the branches for a while.  I wheeled him over to the shade.  Bringing his wheelchair to a stop, he gave out an exasperated sigh.  I asked my Dad what the problem was at the moment.  He replied:

"You stopped in the wrong part of the shade."

One reading this column and this reflection must understand that when it came to the manner in which I conducted my own life, my Dad maintained high standards -- and frequently was utterly frustrated by my decisions.  Additionally, my Dad was the kind of person who tended to see the gray clouds around the silver lining.  In that moment, I chalked my Dad's remark about the area in the shade at which I stopped to be the result of one or another of these factors -- perhaps both.

With my Dad's passing a few days later, I was called upon to prepare one of the eulogies for his funeral.  As it happened, I had terrible problems with my computer printer.  When I set about to print out my eulogy draft, nuts, bolts and springs literally flew from my printer unit.  I elected to take this as a sign that my Dad did not approve of the more formal eulogy I'd prepared for him.  In the end, at his funeral, I ended up speaking off the cuff -- truly not knowing exactly what I was going to say when I approached the pulpit that morning. 

On my way up towards the altar, I thought back on my Dad's comment about the shade.  It was at that moment that I realized that in life there are times when we are all accidental teachers and other moments when we are all accidental students.  In other words, sometimes we teach others by happenstance and at other times we learn something completely by chance.  I realized that my Dad's comment about "the wrong part of the shade" was one of those moments in life of accidental teaching and accidental learning -- my Dad ever the teacher and me continuing to be a student.

My Dad's words that September day are far wiser than one might imagine on first blush.  During all of our lives, we end up facing some gray days, either through our own less than stellar decisions or through events that truly are out of our control.  In any case, when these gray days come, we do have the ability to position ourselves in the right part of the shade.  By doing so, we will be able to set our sights on the sun beyond the clouds.  We will be able to understand that better days do always come.

Thanks, Dad, for the wonderful lesson learned during your own last week on Earth.