Second Chances was the name of his CD, the one in which he put a bunch of songs he wrote together, found a musician, and went into the studio to lay it down. The sad thing was that the musician and the studio were small time and they took a lot of his hard-earned money acquired by working two and three jobs for most of his life.

The music got airplay locally for a few months. I’ll never forget the first time I heard his song on the local country radio station. I was ecstatic and tried to call him, I was getting ready to go to work. He was a very humble man, but I knew that deep inside there was a little boy in there jumping up and down with excitement. I knew his dream was to be published as a songwriter, later in life he began to refer to himself as the scribe.

He only made it to the eighth grade, having to help his parents on the farm. They never had much in the way of possessions, but his memories were of a very idealistic childhood of farming and fishing. He was a simple man; kind and loving, always willing to listen to a person who needed a shoulder to cry on.

With his gentle nature, people were drawn to him and he always made time for people. Despite his lack of standard education, he was a very wise and intelligent man. A man of few words, but each one with a purpose to carry you along a little farther than where you were when you met him.

Shortly after the studio experience, he and my mom went to Nashville to “shop” the CD. To hear them describe it, they went door to door to every publishing place there, in addition to those smoke filled Nashville honky tonks. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him happier than for those few years, he lived on the hope of “making something of himself”.

The ending to the studio story is heartbreaking, I liken it to the stock market crash when folks were throwing themselves out of windows in tall buildings. Before it was over, he was nominated for an award. I remember him picking out his suit, new boots and a new western hat. He was a cowboy through and through. My dad took me along because my mom wasn’t in the best of health.

Walking into that fancy hotel in Nashville, I felt like a princess proud to be on the arm of my dad, nothing less than a saint. He beamed the whole night.

Nothing came of that awards show, and the hammer came down soon after that. The hammer of his dream being put in a coffin. The studio, and the musician were not really up for the challenge to take it as far as they could. I’ve since learned that some places like this studio have a habit of taking the money from the simple people with a dream.

He died on February 1st, 2006 from congestive heart failure. He’d been diagnosed with small cell lungcancer, emphysema, copd and leukemia. He’d had the leukemia for a few years at that point, but it seemed to lie in wait not causing him too many problems. I smile inwardly that it took four diseases that he knew about and one he didn’t, to kill him.

That was how the scribe was, he never gave up and he always managed to walk through everything in his life with courage and a smile. It took me a long time to come to peace with the fact that he just couldn’t go on any longer.

One of our last times together, he was sobbing due to the pain he was in and the side effects of chemotherapy. I hugged him really tight and i told him that if he needed to go, that it would be ok.

There are days that I miss him so much my insides ache, then there are the days when I *see* him and *feel* him with me. He will always live on inside of me, and of my children as I pass on the wisdom of the scribe.